About South East Asia Projects
Over fifty years of civil war have left Burma one of the poorest countries in the world. In the conflict zones, few have access to even the most basic healthcare. Treatable diseases such as malaria, acute respiratory infections and diarrhea kill many. Land mines and war injuries make the situation even more desperate.
In 2005 Earth Mission began working with the Internally Displaced People’s of Burma. This effort has become focused on helping the Free Burma Rangers to provide quality medical care inside the conflict zones. In 2010, FBR’s medics (mostly from Burmese ethnic minority people groups) treated more than 22,000 patients. Each of these patient interactions represents the work of a young medic who has walked for days over difficult terrain often at great personal risk. Medicine is carried in packs by medics and teams.
Helping these medics provide effective healthcare first depends on developing an accurate understanding of the unique health needs of the target population. For Burma, there have only been a few good studies describing conditions in the conflict zones. This makes the patient data generated by FBR medics extremely important. Therefore we are constantly striving to improve this data collection process while simultaneously using it to refine training, medicines, supplies and treatment guidelines for the medics.
FBR Medics often start with a high school level of education or less. In 2010 Earth Mission helped start a year long clinically based training program for beginning Karen medics (the Jungle School of Medicine - Kawthoolei). Initially, western trained medical professionals support this training but teaching and administrative duties are being turned over to local staff. The goal of this training is that beginning medics are well prepared to provide simple but quality healthcare for common problems encountered in the jungle even with only their limited resources.
For experienced medics, Earth Mission helps FBR doctors, nurses and senior medics conduct regular month long review courses. In addition to attending traditional lectures, medics in this training mode are encouraged to share case studies with colleagues in order to generate discussion and share experiences.
On occasion, patient need exceeds the medic’s ability in the field. Many of the FBR teams are equipped with digital cameras and for those teams with satellite email capability, online consultations can be provided. When necessary, medics are able to transport stable patients to medical facilities beyond the conflict zones, to countries where high quality care is available. Earth Mission helps to fund and support these referrals. This includes identifying appropriate clinics and hospitals that can meet the patients’ medical needs, helping to arrange accommodation for patient and family, assisting patients with appointments, transport and translation.
