Northern Rakhine State / Myanmar
Strengthening community-based health services in the villages of the Maungdaw Township
- Community health workers are trained to be the first point of contact in case of ill health.
Malnutrition and infectious illnesses such as diarrhoea, Malaria, tuberculosis and respiratory diseases are widely spread. Since the basic health care provisions in the rural areas are very simple the population either lacks completely in or has only limited access to the services. The death tall, especially amongst children is extremely high.
The central issues of our work are to support the 120,000 people from the township, strengthen the basis health care structures and improve access to them.
The northern regions of the Township Maungdaw on the frontier to Bangladesh are amongst the poorest regions in Myanmar. A big part of the Muslim population had to flee to Bangladesh in 1991/1992 to protect themselves from attacks. Many of them could only return to the country in recent years, protected by UNHCR. The enormous poverty amongst the still oppressed and often landless repatriates and destroyed social and family structures are the cause of a highly vulnerable group whose survival strategies a very limited.
- Create the access to a decentralised, community based, basis health care service and secure transport connection to the rural health centres
- Assure the functionality of rural health centres
- Equip health centres and schools with appropriate sanitation facilities and water tanks for rainwater.
- Training of new and old Community Health Worker (CHW) and Traditional Birth Assistances (TBAs)
- Equipment of CHWs and TBAs with urgently necessary medications and basic medical equipment as well as and bicycles
- Training of new and old, local and governmental health staff
- Necessary renovation of rural health centres, including the construction of sanitation facilities and water tanks for rainwater
- Training and education programmes in villages and at schools concerning hygiene, family planning, infant and child care, malnutrition as well as infectious illnesses
- Building sanitation facilities, latrines, tanks for rain water for schools in this region
- Provision of materials and guidelines to built latrines for housing
- Referral of serious sick patients to hospital and payment of the transport- and treatmentcosts
| Project data | |
| Duration: | since February 2004 |
| Financing: | EuropeAid, UNHCR, ECHO, Malteser International, private donations |
| Partner: | local health authorities |
Contact | |
| Malteserinternational: | Sandra Harlass |
| info(at)malteser-international.org | |
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Survivor village residents also receive counseling and nutritional support. Photo: Eitan Simanor
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Esther Suchanek in Myanmar
