People in Arakan State have called on authorities to improve the delivery of healthcare services in the state by providing much-needed doctors and medicines, as countries around the globe marked World Health Day last week.
Local residents in Rathedaung, Buthidaung, Ramree, Mrauk-U and other Arakan State townships have poor access to healthcare services as medical facilities, including cottage hospitals and rural clinics, are short of doctors and other healthcare workers.
“Since a cottage hospital was opened in our village in 2019, the hospital is run by only two nurses,” said Ko Maung Myat Aung, from Ugar Village on Rathedaung Township’s Moese Island. “It has been around four years now. In case of a health emergency, we had to go to another hospital in Kutaung [village]. But then, the doctor from Kutaung transferred to another place some four months ago. There is no doctor in the entire Moese Island now, and we have to travel both by boat and road to Sittwe to see a doctor.”
Cases of patients who have died while travelling from remote villages to medical facilities in towns are not rare in rural parts of Arakan State.
Dr. Myint Than from Ponnagyun Township said: “Rural people in Arakan State have little knowledge about health. Health Department officials, local and international nongovernmental organisations and civil society organisations are educating them. The media should also disseminate health knowledge to them.”
Sittwe high school student Ma Myat Kay Khaing seconded that view.
“First aid should be taught in basic education high schools; for example, what we should do in case of a snake bite, and drowning.”
Rural communities are not alone in suffering from a lack of doctors. Even the 500-bed Sittwe General Hospital, the major public hospital in Arakan State, is lacking in physicians and hi-tech medical devices. The hospital is too understaffed to run a shift system, said a nurse from the hospital.
“Sittwe Hospital is a state-level hospital, and yet it is understaffed. In particular, there are not sufficient physicians. So, when there are emergency cases at night, there are only nurses on duty and there is no doctor who can give immediate treatment. And nurses have to take care of the patients until a physician arrives,” said the nurse.
Sittwe General Hospital is the major hospital for around 10 townships in Arakan State. Locals have called for more aggressively recruiting doctors and procuring medical devices as necessary.
DMG’s calls to Arakan State Health Department chief Dr. Kyi Lwin and Arakan State Administration Council spokesman U Hla Thein went unanswered.
According to 2018 data, there were 70 hospitals across Arakan State, including the lone 500-bed facility in Sittwe, one 200-bed hospital, four 100-bed hospitals, eight 50-bed hospitals, four 25-bed hospitals, and 52 16-bed and cottage hospitals.
Additionally, there were 100 rural healthcare centres and 560 sub-centres as of 2018. According to the table of organisation, Arakan State is supposed to have 816 doctors, but there were only 236 doctors as of 2018, according to a press conference in November of that year, under the since-ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) government.
World Health Day is commemorated annually on April 7.
