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Health

We build skills, knowledge and resources to improve access to basic healthcare services. There is an absence of primary health care in the Delta villages. Hospitals in the towns are hours away by boat, and transport charges are too expensive. There is a severe lack of trained midwives in the Delta, with most maternity care handled by village women. Many health problems are the result of a lack of clean drinking water. Our programme aims to address these gaps by building the villagers' skills, knowledge and resources, to improve access to basic healthcare.

community-healthcare-in-burma

Training Community Health Workers to provide basic healthcare to their villages

We train community health workers in the villages to equip them, effectively, as paramedics, to serve their own and neighbouring communities.

Selecting three people per village from 10 villages, we provide them with a thorough training in basic medicine over a 6-month period. They are taught to provide basic help and treatment, and recognize and advise on more complex problems that require hospital treatment.

We have conducted trainings in Bogalay (2011), and Thar Paung (2013) with 49 students completing the course. They serve front line care to over ten several thousand people.

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The story of Daw Mya Mya Oo

Daw Mya Mya Oo lives in Ya Kyaw Wa village near Thar Paung. She completed community healthcare worker training with us.

Training traditional birth attendants to improve knowledge and techniques in maternity care

Qualified UK Mid-Wives, together with our team, conduct week-long training with the village women who currently provide traditional maternity care within their community.

They help improve/ increase their knowledge in modern techniques in how to look after pregnant women, deliver babies as safely as possible, and care for mother and baby after birth.

Our first training for 29 participants in Yay Kyaw Toe in 2015 was extremely successful, and a further 76 were trained in 2016 and 2017.

An older Burmese woman looks at a newborn baby

Newborn baby safely delivered by TBA

Providing villages with a continuous source of clean drinking water

The lack of clean water is responsible for much intestinal disease in the Delta, and can be particularly dangerous for children. We help communities by drilling wells, and install and maintain water pumps, which serve the immediate village community, and nearby villages.

A group of people build a well in a field in Burma

Community building well in Yay Kyaw Toe

Providing surgery for facial disfigurement

Facial clefts are quite common in the Delta, sometimes very serious, and almost all untreated. We locate cases and take them to Yangon, where we can call on the services of a surgeon trained and supported by Smile Train.

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The Story of Kyi Lè Lè Oo

This little girl lives near Thar Paung, and suffered from a very bad facial cleft – some of the unkind children called her ‘the ogre’. She had told her mother that she wanted to be a nun. Her first operation changed her life and ideas – now she no longer gets teased, and wants a normal life.

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