Maternal Health Care ‘Extremely Limited’ in Eastern Burma

By SAW YAN NAING

Access to maternal health care is extremely limited while poor nutrition, anemia and malaria are prevalent in the conflict zones of eastern Burma, according to researchers at US-based Johns Hopkins University and the Burma Medical Association.

According to the report, published on Monday in the US medical journal PLoS Medicine, researchers surveyed some 3,000 women in eastern Burma—especially from the Karen, Karenni and Shan ethnic groups—and found nearly 90 percent of them give birth at home; a skilled attendant was present at only 5 percent of births; and only a third of women had any antenatal or postnatal care.

The report also said that very few women received iron supplements or had used insecticide-treated bed nets. As a result, they found more than half the women were anemic, while many had contracted malaria or suffered from poor nutrition.

The survey is part of a baseline assessment of women's needs for a Mobile Obstetric Maternal Health Workers (MOM) Project, which was established in August 2005 by a consortium of concerned health organizations, working through the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand.

In war-torn Karen State, more than 10 percent of households—some 200,000 people—have been forced to relocate. In Karenni State, a third of women reported members of their household being forced to work in the ceasefire region, while many women in Shan State suffered from forced labor, forced relocation, threats to food security and personal insults, said the researchers.

“It is clear,” the authors said in their press release, “that considerable political, financial and human resources will be needed to improve maternal health in this region.”

The newly appointed general-secretary of the Karen National Union, Zipporah Sein, said that women and children in Karen State are the most vulnerable victims of the civil war among the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Karen State.

She said that some women had given birth to babies in the jungle while they were hiding in fear of Burmese troops. Many babies died as a result of poor health care and insufficient medicine, she said.

International relief organizations put the infant mortality rate at 91 deaths for every 1000 births in eastern Burma, compared to a national average of 76, and just 18 in neighboring Thailand. Twenty percent of children in Karen State die before their fifth birthday, while a staggering one in twelve women die during childbirth.

Thousands of people in eastern Burma are regularly subjected to human rights violations, according to several Karen relief groups and international human rights monitors.

In early 2008, an estimated 200,000 Karen people were listed as being IDPs in Karen State, according to Karen relief groups, such as the Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People.

More than 130,000 Karen and Karenni people are living as refugees in camps along the Thai-Burmese border due to a decades-old conflict.