gms | German Medical Science

Within the past decade, Myanmar has undergone multiple complex political and economic transformations. Challenged by a former civil war and military regime, a transition to peace and democratization was constitutionally achieved only in 2015. In 2011, the Ministry of Health initiated the process of rehabilitating the national health system, with the aim of providing universal health coverage to its entire population by 2030. At present, Myanmar has the lowest per-capita government healthcare spending in the world: only 3 USD per person [1]. To aid Myanmar’s health systems in becoming effective, it is necessary to understand the key challenges faced by any efforts to improve population-wide health, and how these challenges are changing in response to underlying demographic, economic and political realities. In 2013, there were 0.61 physicians, 1 nurse, 1 midwife and 0.21 community health workers per 1,000 people in Myanmar, with an availability of 600 hospital beds per 1,000 people. The number of specialist surgical, anesthetic, and obstetric providers working stood at 2.4 per 100,000 population, managing a surgical volume of 211 procedures per 100,000 population, with an overall total of 337,726 operations per year [2]. In comparison, the neighboring countries of Thailand and Malaysia have 13 and 12 specialist surgical, anesthetic and obstetric providers per 100,000 population, and a surgical volume of 483 and 428 procedures per 100,000, respectively [3].