Healthcare for 2000 Rural Villagers in Myanmar

C. lives on Ywar Tar Yar island, in the Andaman Sea close to Kawthaung township, she is 52 years old and with her husband makes a living from fishing. Four years ago while she was fishing she injured her leg.  To treat it, she went all the way to Kawthaung Hospital, but after the emergency was fixed, she could not afford the cost of hospital care (70 percent is borne directly by the patient in Myanmar) so she returned to her island trying to care for herself at home. 

As time passed, the leg could never fully heal, and C. was no longer able to work as much as before the injury. 

The MedAcross Mobile Clinic also serves some of the islands in the Andaman archipelago, where people live without a permanent medical facility. That's how C. learned about the free care provided monthly by doctors who arrive on the island. 

"The first time I saw the doctors arrive on the island I thought it was a stroke of luck. They gave me a booklet in which they wrote down my health problems, examined me, and medicated my leg by giving me medicine. But I didn't think I would see them again, Ywar Tar Yar is an isolated place and no one ever comes here. After some time they came back, the doctors remembered my leg problem and treated me again. They explained to me that the injury will take time to heal because it has been neglected, but they assured me that I can go back to being almost like I was before the incident."

The Mobile Clinic is a vital service that reaches patients living far from health centers in Myanmar's far south, where the situation is extremely precarious. 

M. is a 27 years old guy living in a village in Kawthaung township, in the southern part of Myanmar. He used to work as a carpenter building wood furniture with his father until he got a stroke and the situation became dramatic. 

The stroke damaged the use of his arms and his leg became very weak so he got injured by falling from the stairs. He is laying on a bed for two months and the family cannot afford medical bills for medicine and specific assistance. The pain and the bed sores make him eat as little as possible, when Medacross doctors came to his house to visit him he barely looks at them, seems to have no interest in the surroundings and suffered from acute urine retention that can easily transform into an emergency. 

MedAcross team define a post-stroke therapy for M. and include him in the remote assistance for Non Communicable disease patients, which consists of training Community Health Volunteers in each village to assist chronic patients in strict connection with our medical team, providing medicines and preventing the worsening of illness. 

With your help, our Mobile Clinic can reach patients like M. reshaping the future of young Myanmar patients and families during the current crisis. 

These days of summer are thrilling for us, right now Daniele, MedAcross president and radiology professor, and Erika, our country manager are in Thailand to meet the Myanmar staff in Ranong, at the border with Myanmar. 

Since 202 our international staff can't travel to Myanmar, due to the Covid19 first and for visas difficulties later. During the past weeks, the Thai government allows Myanmar citizens to spend a few days in the country, making possible the reunion with our amazing Burmese staff! We are excited to see them and we planned a two days meeting to discuss new strategies to continue providing free medical care to Burmese patients through mobile clinics, telemedicine and community education. 

In the last months, the MedAcross Mobile Clinics visited several villages in both the islands of the Lampi archipelago and the rubber and oil palm plantations in Kawthaung district, providing medical examinations and medicines for residents with health problems. The MedAcross Mobile Clinic is always integrated with the telemedicine project to constantly monitor patients living in isolated and inaccessible areas for several months of the year, watch the project video. 

Links:

• Telemedicine and mobile clinic approach

Since Myanmar's coup, the activities of MedAcross have continued with the limitations demanded by the government that require checkpoints between towns and villages and a restriction on meetings with more than 10 people.

These limitations are particularly difficult for the patients living in the isolated villages of Kawthaung, where it is challenging to access in medications. For several months, it was not possible to reach patients with the Mobile Clinic. In order to continue to provide health care to those who remained isolated, we thought of a solution that we had in mind for some time: telemedicine applied to the Mobile Clinic.

The medical staff of MedAcross has activated specific training for some particularly capable volunteers living in remote villages. They were trained on how to take the vital signs of patients suffering from chronic diseases, as well as the management of common diseases that do not require specific medical prescriptions (e.g. common articular pains, headaches and stomach aches). Volunteers have become a point of reference for their villages, especially when the Mobile Clinic cannot reach them. They report patients' vital signs to our staff by phone, creating long-distance consultations followed by the delivery of free medicines.

MedAcross has been planning for some time to train communities to improve health conditions from the inside with villagers. The pandemic and the Burmese crisis have accelerated this process, aiming to make communities more resilient and active in terms of their health condition.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Finding the time to look back it's always difficult, it just never seems the right time because the present is constantly knocking at the door asking to solve problems. 

Yet it is useful to understand how many steps have already been taken, how many challenges we have overcome, especially if the period concerns a pandemic, a lock-down and many other problems!

For MedAcross, 2020 meant above all teamwork, it was strange but we have never felt so close to our Burmese doctors as in the months of lock-down. From a distance, we were able to plan and carry out Covid-19 prevention programs and to continue our medical activities.

You can read all the results we have achieved together in the 2020 Report and Budget present in our website.