Every month, our project manager in Myanmar Su Myat Oo (called Su Su) sends us a summary of the activities at the Irrawaddy River Doctors and at the mother and child center. She also gives us an insight into the current situation in the politically unstable Myanmar and the impact this is having on the local people.

We reproduce her impressive report in the original English language. Here are her observations for the month of May:

Dear Dr. Veronika,

I hope you and your team are fine and healthy. Today, I want to write a monthly overview report for our May medical trip. When we started our May trip, the weather was so bad, but we were able to finish it safely and successfully on June 3, 2022 (Friday). On Friday morning 9:00 AM, our team arrived back to the office station safely and happily. All our staff is fine and healthy until today. We organised the treatments according to our Covid-19 rules, we checked the travel history of all patients and screened their body temperature. Unfortunately we do not have any rapid tests we could use.

During our 24 working days, we visited 16 villages. We treated a total amount of 1640 patients. We had 1200 general patients - in percentage 73% - and 440 dental patients - in percentage 27%. We offered antenatal care to 124 pregnant women with 99 laboratory tests. A total number of 107 children under 15 years visited the boat.

In this May the main diseases were Malaria, Dengue, Hepatitis, Syphilis, Hypertension and Diabetes. Sometimes, we performed a minor surgery for those who needed it and some patients needed to be referred to the nearest government hospital or private specialist clinic, because they need a long -term treatment and hospital stays. We did our best to treat on the boat everything we can.

Here are some pictures of the treatments:

On June 4 afternoon, our team has started again for June trip. Please pray for all of IRD staff to stay safe and healthy. As you know, it is raining season in Myanmar. So, we are very careful in this season. I think you know that Irrawaddy Division is one of the most cyclone-prone areas in Myanmar. However, this situation cannot stop our team to help those who need us.

Also our new Mother Child Centre in Bogale is prospering. We have started operations in January only and have already had 329 visits of pregnant women. As this is a totally new offer for the women in this area we are very happy that they are so open to it and using it frequently. Two midwives are taking care of the women and one gynaecologist is coming once a week to check the difficult cases. We already had more 16 healthy babies born in the new centre.

In my conclusion, I would like to thank again and again to Artemed Stiftung and all donors. Because of your help, we can continue to do this medical operation. I believe that if you can continue to support us in the future, we can do a lot of good things for the Myanmar people, who really need your help.

With Best regards,

Su Su