The clinic where Mai Myi Knun works is supported with medicine from Mae Tao Clinic (MTC). In his clinic, they do not have enough trained medics, most health workers are Community Health Worker (CHW). When medics are busy or attending meetings in other areas, the CHW cannot always properly treat emergency cases. His clinic leader let him join the medic training at MTC in 2017. During this training, his knowledge and experience has improved a lot. He stated that, if possible, he would like to encourage the MTC to do whatever it takes, to not stop helping them for training and supplying medication.
* Due to the interviewee’s security issue his face is pixelised.
Mai Myi Knun is 21 years old. He is from Shan State [1] in Burma/ Myanmar and works for Mae Tao Clinic’s partner organization Back Pack Health Worker team (BPHWT). In his area in Shan state, there is about 50,000 population. In 2012 he came to the border to attend the Community Health Worker (CHW) training at Mae Tao Clinic. After the training, he went back to his clinic in Shan state. He practised as community health worker there for over year, mostly treating children. He says that the children’s parents have such poor health knowledge and they could not take care their children well. Often the parents are working every day and some families have many children.
The clinic where he works is supported with medicine from Mae Tao Clinic. In his clinic, they do not have enough trained medics, most health workers are CHW. When medics are busy or attending meetings in other areas, the CHW cannot always properly treat emergency cases. They just only can to refer the patient to go to another clinic. The area has poor internet and phone connections so it is a problem to communicate by phone or online. Mai Myi Knun indicates that sometimes they worry that the patients misunderstand them and think they are not good as health workers.
Therefore, his clinic leader let him join the medic training at MTC in 2017. During this training, his knowledge and experience has improved a lot. He reports that it was a very good training because they have practical internships at MTC after a period of theoretical classes. He enjoys the opportunity of practices at MTC because trainees see many cases and the MTC senior medic staff train them in the departments. He feels he improved skills and is now determined that he can able to help his community to improve health care.
Mai Myi Knun says that, if MTC would not be able to support his clinic with training and some highly required basic medication, they are going to have a big problem. His area is really in need of health workers who received health training. Without MTC providing health worker training, his clinic staff will not have a chance to attend the medic training, so there would be no new generations of health workers to care for patients in the future. Because in their local area, they do not have any trainer to train them like MTC, to promote the quality of their knowledge and health services. He stated that, MTC is not only supporting his clinic, it supports many other health facilities and schools as well. If possible, he would like to encourage the MTC to do whatever it takes, to not stop helping them for training and supplying medication. We can work together with unity to help the people who really need health support, especially to care for children towards their future life.
Maternal and Child Health Care training: Our goal for the joint training program is to improve maternal and child health care in Eastern Burma. This training takes 240 hours (2 months) for theory and 240 hours (2 months) for practical sessions. The MCH training topics include male and female anatomy, antenatal and postnatal care, normal delivery, immediate newborn care, fever during and after delivery, malaria in pregnancy, universal precaution, HIV/STI, GBV, immunization, common diseases in under 5 years and monitoring of pregnancy.
[1] Shan State is a state of Myanmar. Shan State borders China to the north, Laos to the east, and Thailand to the south, and five administrative divisions of Burma in the west. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shan_State)