Burma's health care cripplingly under funded: MSF

Burma's health care cripplingly under funded: MSF

by Mizzima News

Monday, 22 December 2008 22:12

New Delhi (Mizzima) - Lack of sufficient funding by the military junta and the international community towards the health care system has caused severe suffering and preventable deaths in Burma, a new report by the New York-based Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières said. The MSF in its annual 'Top Ten humanitarian crises' said the health care system in the military-ruled country is cripplingly under funded, leaving the vast majority of the people without access to health care. Luke Arend, Deputy Head of Mission of MSF in Burma in an email message to Mizzima said, due to lack of sufficient funding, "There are simply far too much human suffering and preventable deaths in Myanmar [Burma]." Arend said both the Burmese government as well as the international community has failed to provide much needed funds to save lives from preventable deaths. According to him, Burma's military government had allocated only $0.70 per person in 2008, which is a mere 0.3 % of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and accounts for the world's lowest health care funding. Similarly, Burma receives very low Overseas Development Aid budget of only US $3 per person per year. While the international community has set its commitment on the Millennium Development Goals of 'providing universal access to treatment for HIV to all those who need it by 2010', it is a distant reality in Burma as only less than 20 per cent of people living with HIV receive treatment. "The Myanmar [Burmese] people do not get this help from the international community like their neighbouring countries do and this is not right," Arend said. Despite the MSF trying to reach as many needy people as it can, it is faced with financial constraints and shortage of funding and are forced to turn away people in need of medical attention, Arend said. "The main constraint is coping with the huge unmet medical needs we face day to day and being forced to turn away HIV patients who have nowhere else to go for treatment knowing they will die," Arend said. According to MSF, Malaria continues to be the number one killer in Burma, while an estimated 242,000 people live with HIV, which killed an estimated 25,000 people last year. Besides financial constraints, Arend said restriction on aid workers is also another obstacle to reach out to people needing assistance in remote areas. The MSF, which has operations in Northern Shan, Kachin, Arakan, and Karenni states and Rangoon, Irrawaddy and Tenasserim divisions, said its staff do not have free access around the country. "Permission is required to visit new locations and unfortunately for the people requiring medical treatment certain places are incredibly difficult or simply not possible to access," Arend said. Arend said, unless both the Burmese government and the international community shoulders stronger financial commitments, vulnerable Burmese people would continue facing deaths that can be prevented. Besides Burma, the MSF report said massive forced civilian displacements, violence, and unmet medical needs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Pakistan, along with neglected medical emergencies in Zimbabwe, are some of the worst humanitarian and medical emergencies in the world. Reporting by Solomon, writing by Mungpi