1st Newsletter December 2017

Myanmar has a population of 51 million. After decades of neglect on healthcare and education services under the military regime, the country is faced with significant gap of highly skilled manpower, resources and infrastructure to deliver the safe comprehensive healthcare.

THET Myanmar was set up in April 2017 with objectives of coordinating and strengthening UK contribution to healthcare in Myanmar and to align UK technical support with the healthcare priorities of Myanmar government.

THET has supported three partnerships in Myanmar from 2014 onwards, which enabled the training of doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians, physiotherapists and neonatal midwives. Through those partnerships, strong academic relationships were developed. An example is that Cambridge Yangon Trauma Intervention Project, which focuses on training of orthopaedic surgeons, nurses and intensive care doctors and nurses was requested to support country’s Intensive Care development plan. Dr Rowan Burnstein (Head of Neurointensive care at Cambridge University Hospital) and her team carried out the detailed analysis of 19 ICUs in the country with the help of their counterparts and THET Myanmar team. Findings and 10-year ICU development plan were disseminated at the National ICU Development Workshop chaired by the Permanent Secretary Professor Thet Khaing Win in September 2017. This is an excellent example of how a health partnership work could help leading to a strong infrastructure change with a wider impact at a national level.