PSI in Myanmar

Local partners include Médecins sans Frontières (Holland), Médecins du Monde, World Vision, CARE and Save the Children, as well as UN agencies. PSI/Myanmar also coordinates with the Myanmar Medical Association and the Ministry of Health.

PSI/Myanmar’s Sun Quality Health (SQH) network is comprised of over 800 particularly valuable partners. Private physicians across Myanmar are trained and monitored by PSI/Myanmar on the provision of reproductive health services and treatment for malaria, TB, pneumonia and sexually transmitted infections.

Major donors include the European Commission, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom, UNFPA, UNICEF, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

PSI/Myanmar operates two voluntary testing and counseling centers and 10 drop-in-centers that provide educational activities and clinical services for female sex workers and men who have sex with men. Management of sexually transmitted infections is offered through the SQH network and at drop-incenter clinics using CureU pre-packaged treatment kits. PSI/Myanmar also deploys outreach workers to conduct educational sessions with clients of sex-workers. Since the launch of Aphaw in 1996, annual condom sales have risen from 400,000 to approximately 20 million in 2007.

PSI/Myanmar has also introduced products such as feel for women and feel for men condoms targeted toward Myanmar’s highest-risk groups.

PSI/Myanmar’s malaria programming includes behavior change communication to enhance knowledge and appropriate preventative behaviors. SupaTab insecticide treatment tablets are used to treat bednets for malaria prevention and Sure brand rapid diagnostic test kits and malaria treatment are made available by SQH providers. Sure’s artesunate combination therapy will be replaced by the WHO-recommended Coartem, branded as Serena, in 2008.

In 2007, SQH providers conducted approximately 860,000 reproductive health consultations. PSI/Myanmar makes the following products available via retailers, pharmacists and SQH providers: male and female condoms, daily contraceptive pills, one and three-month injectable contraception, intrauterine devices and emergency contraception.

WaterGuard provides a simple, cost-effective means of preventing diarrhea, cholera, typhoid and other waterborne diseases.

PSI/Myanmar introduced DOTS into the SQH network in 2004 and continues to scale up services. To date, 415 SQH providers have registered more than 11,500 TB cases and achieved a treatment success rate of approximately 80%.

As an extension of services provided by SQH doctors, a pneumonia treatment program was launched in early 2008 and offers treatment (Trimox brand products) to children under five.