Seventeen newly constructed health centers in the Magway region have been handed over to the Ministry of Health and Sports last month, which will operate the centers. The new facilities will focus on combating infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria as well as reducing the dangers of childbirth by providing maternal and newborn health care.
The centers will have between two to five personnel on staff and have the capacity to treat up to 50 patients a day. The Magway health centers are the first of 78 centers that are planned to be built in Myanmar by 2017, in an effort to improve healthcare options for residents living in rural communities. The other 61 planned facilities will be constructed in Ayeyarwady, Magway, Mandalay, Sagaing and Yangon Regions and Chin, Kayah and Shan states. This large undertaking is financed by Three Millennium Development Goal Fund (3MDG), a donor-based fund that focuses on improving health care options in Myanmar. 3MDG is financed by seven donors from the governments of Australia, Denmark, the European Union, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. “3MDG is proud to work together with the Ministry of Health to improve the health of people living in rural areas. The 17 health centres opened today in Magway, and the remaining 61 health centres across Myanmar are just one of many initiatives towards universal health care,” says 3MDG Fund Director, Dr Paul Sender.
Accessing health services is difficult for people living in rural areas in Myanmar due to poor road conditions and inaccessible waterways, high transportation costs, and substandard or non-existent health facilities. As a result, people living in rural areas often have worse health status than people living in cities, with shorter life expectancies and higher numbers of deaths of women and babies in childbirth
