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. The following is a summary of the public health system in the state, in the fiscal year 2002–2003.
| 2002–2003 | # Hospitals | # Beds |
|---|---|---|
| Specialist hospitals | 1 | 200 |
| General hospitals with specialist services | 4 | 800 |
| General hospitals | 60 | 2013 |
| Health clinics | 63 | 1008 |
| Total | 128 | 4021 |
Read more about this topic: Shan State
Famous quotes containing the words health and/or care:
“In the continual enterprise of trying to guide appropriately, renegotiate with, listen to and just generally coexist with our teenage children, we ourselves are changed. We learn even more clearly what our base-line virtues are. We listen to our teenagers and change our minds about some things, stretching our own limits. We learn our own capacity for flexibility, firmness and endurance.”
—Jean Jacobs Speizer. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Collective, ch. 4 (1978)
“Apart from the fact that women posess the equipment for lactation, mothers seem no more predisposed to, or innately skilled at, child care than are fathers, siblings or non parents. Besides, women obviously come in a variety of shapes, sizes, talents and temperaments. Why shouldn’t they vary in degrees of motherhood?”
—Shari Thurer (20th century)