Health Care
The general state of health care in Myanmar is poor. The military government spends anywhere from 0.5% to 3% of the country's GDP on health care, consistently ranking among the lowest in the world. Although health care is nominally free, in reality, patients have to pay for medicine and treatment, even in public clinics and hospitals. Public hospitals lack many of the basic facilities and equipment. In general, the health care infrastructure outside of Yangon and Mandalay is extremely poor but is especially worse in remote areas like Kachin State. The following is a summary of the public health care system in the state.
| 2002–2003 | # Hospitals | # Beds |
|---|---|---|
| Specialist hospitals | 2 | 125 |
| General hospitals with specialist services | 2 | 500 |
| General hospitals | 17 | 553 |
| Health clinics | 22 | 352 |
| Total | 43 | 1530 |
Read more about this topic: Kachin State
Famous quotes containing the words health and/or care:
“I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and endurance of our lives. The miracle is, that what is is, when it is so difficult, if not impossible, for anything else to be; that we walk on in our particular paths so far, before we fall on death and fate, merely because we must walk in some path; that every man can get a living, and so few can do anything more. So much only can I accomplish ere health and strength are gone, and yet this suffices.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The reason child care is such a loaded issue is that when we talk about it, we are always tacitly talking about motherhood. And when we’re talking about motherhood we’re always tacitly assuming that child care must be a very dim second to full-time mother care.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)