Basic Health Clinic

Treating Myanmar's poorest people

Kawthaung is a city with a high rate of poverty in the south of Myanmar. Here, thousands of people live in precarious conditions:
without access to basic healthcare,
in slums,
without direct access to clean water.

When a Burmese inhabitant falls ill, he or she often cannot get treatment because 74% of health care costs are out of pocket in public hospitals. For this reason, the poorest people do not have medical checkups, but reach hospitals when the situation is so serious that they cannot work. In these cases, patients often develop serious illnesses that require lengthy health care treatments that are too expensive.

MedAcross has created the Basic Health Clinic to respond to the health needs of the poorest population of Kawthaung: every day our doctors visit about 50 patients providing the medicines they need completely free of charge.