Burma democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has been appointed an ambassador of the UN’s programme on HIV and AIDS and has been tasked with fighting discrimination against people living with the disease, the agency said Tuesday. (more…)

BANGKOK, 13 November 2012 – Since unrest broke out in Rakhine State in Myanmar in June, UNICEF has provided urgently needed help to save severely malnourished children, to prevent water borne diseases and to provide basic necessities to displaced children and their families. (more…)

Bangkok –  Radical Buddhist groups are preventing doctors from delivering assistance to areas of western Myanmar affected by intense sectarian violence, an international medical charity said on Monday. (more…)

At a remote medical outpost near the jungle-blanketed Thai-Burmese border, a villager pricks the finger of a feverish baby living on the frontline of the war on drug-resistant malaria. (more…)

Bangkok – Myanmar is on course to eliminate new HIV/AIDS infections among children by 2015 but sustained investment, attention to cross-border movements and a focus on those most at risk are needed to achieve this, the head of the United Nations agency for HIV/AIDS says. (more…)

Staff and volunteers from the Myanmar Red Cross Society have been working with all communities affected by the inter-communal violence in Rakhine State, providing much needed health care, and water and sanitation support, both of which are areas of critical concern. (more…)

Yangon – Health workers in Myanmar are confident that efforts to narrow the country’s huge gap between access to, and need for, life-saving medicines to treat HIV/AIDS are back on track after the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria invited the country to apply for additional funding.

“I would not have dreamt that this was possible last November,” said Peter Paul de Groote, head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Myanmar, referring to the Global Fund’s cancellation of funding that health workers in Myanmar were relying on to expand access to antiretrovirals (ARVs).

Instead, MSF has been forced to turn away people in need of ARVs. “It’s a trauma for patients sent away and for our staff,” said de Groote.

The Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates 18,000 people die of AIDs-related illnesses annually in Myanmar.

The agency’s coordinator for Myanmar, Eamonn Murphy, said new funds will allow the country to close a “treatment gap” where only one-third of the 120,000 people nationwide who need ARVs receive them.

Health officials drafted a “concept note” outlining how additional funding might be used, which will be reviewed by the Global Fund’s board, Murphy said. It offers two scenarios: the first ensures 85 percent of those who need ARVs receive them by 2015; while with the second, 76 percent of people would be covered, he said. Based on feedback from the board, the government will choose a strategy for the proposal to be submitted early next year.

A spokesman for the Global Fund said it “had encouraged an application by the country for more money” following an August visit to Myanmar by its general director. Additional funding “could make possible an even faster scale-up of HIV treatment.”

Health workers say government healthcare reforms – including a first-time government allocation of US$2.4 million for ARVs this year – as well as a recent managerial shakeup at the Global Fund, have opened the way to boost HIV funding in Myanmar. The Global Fund has installed new managers and is developing a different funding model to be piloted next year that will “invest more strategically”, according to the fund.

Top priority

Health experts in Myanmar agree ARVs are a top priority for the country and that getting more money is contingent on proving “targeted, tight and strategic” interventions can have quick and major impacts.

De Groote said that due to lack of funding thus far, only HIV-positive patients with counts of CD4 – a white blood cell that targets infection – of 150 or below are eligible for ARVs at MSF clinics (the main provider of ARVs nationwide), while the World Health Organization (WHO) advises treatment for everyone whose CD4 counts are 350 or below. A CD4 cell count is one way of measuring the strength of a patient’s immune system as well as how advanced an HIV infection is.

Besides expanding ARV access, the government is also applying for additional money to combat tuberculosis (TB). The country’s TB prevalence is nearly three times the global average and twice the regional average, according to a 2010 survey by the country’s TB programme and WHO.

The current Global Fund support to fight TB in Myanmar was granted in 2009, based on old data that underestimated prevalence by about 50 percent, according to MSF.

Link: http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96531/MYANMAR-Closing-the-HIV-AIDS-treatment-gap

Rangoon – Myanmar has contracted to buy more than two dozen CT scan machines as an increased budget and easing of Western sanctions allows it to upgrade its ailing public health system. (more…)

The World Health Organization said Thursday that governments in the Mekong region must act “urgently” to stop the spread of drug-resistant malaria which has emerged in parts of Vietnam and Myanmar. (more…)

The Mae Tao Clinic has rebuffed rumours that it is planning to return to Burma, accusing the government’s peace team of spreading false information to the media after holding informal meetings with them over the past few months. (more…)

TAUNGBYONE, Burma — Burma’s AIDS epidemic mostly affects marginalized groups, such as the gay community. In a country where homosexuality remains illegal, finding and treating gay patients is a challenge for the few health workers devoted to their treatment. An annual religious event called a Nat festival, however, is one time when the gay community can network – and talk to health workers about treatment. (more…)

Yogyakarta, Indonesia:  Bangladesh, Bhutan,  India, Indonesia, Nepal and Myanmar have a critical shortage of trained health workers. These countries have fewer than 23 health workers (doctors, nurses and midwives) per 10 000 population which is considered the minimum health workforce needed to achieve 80% coverage of essential health interventions. More people lack access to health-care providers in the WHO South-East Asia Region than in WHO’s African Region.  (more…)

Doctors from Hong Kong and Australia have helped launch a new program to train Burma’s first specialists in emergency medicine. (more…)

MYANMAR needs to be given priority support in efforts to control artemisin resistant malaria in the Greater Mekong Sub-region, a report released earlier this year recommended. (more…)

Yangon – Aid workers are concerned about access to healthcare in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State, more than a month after communal violence left over 50,000 people displaced. (more…)

ELIZABETH JACKSON: A team of doctors from Australia and Hong Kong has launched a new program to train the first local specialists in emergency medicine in Burma. (more…)

Burma will address the issue of women’s health, family planning and contraceptives, following a funding initiative by Britain and other donors, which was announced on Wednesday in Naypyitaw. (more…)

Red Cross of Myanmar, Denmark and Britain signed a cooperation agreement here Thursday to launch a five-year program (July 2012-June 2017). (more…)

Yangon – The mother and child who touch hands in an overcrowded Yangon hospice are not family, but their tragic history begins in the blood. (more…)

Yangon – Sales clerk Soe Hlaing was returning to work after buying some betel nut to chew when he suddenly collapsed under a blazing sun on Yangon’s waterfront. (more…)