Bagan Clinic Activities for December 2024 - an update from Dr Hla Tun

Dear Ms. Jan C Ford’s friends,

Good morning there!  I would like to let all of you know that the total number of patients in December 2024 we treated are as follows:

Total number of patients in December 2024 was 594 patients:

• General medical patients = 559
• Dental patients = 25
• Surgical patients for Dec.= 10 

There were 9177 patients seen in 2024:

• General patients 8797
• Dental Patients 280
• Surgical patients 100

You can see that the number of patients coming to our Bagan Clinic were less and less because there were many challenges for both of us (clinic side and patient side).

Shortages of electricity.  In Bagan, electricity can be used 4-8 hours per day. We had to use the generator 8-12 hours per day during clinic day which is from Thursday evening until Sunday afternoon. We had to operate a generator especially for dental, laboratory and operation theater. We had to send our reagents for the blood test to the nearby hotel for storing them at right temperature (Cold Chain) in the fridge from Sunday afternoon until Thursday afternoon when we close our clinic.

Since 2022, there have been shortages of medicine, equipment, syringes, needles and etc. in pharmaceutical companies as well as in the markets because government restricted the many imported items to save the foreign exchange. 

The exchange rate in Myanmar has been fluctuating since 2021.  The exchange rate in 2021 was 1300-1320Kyat/USD and it is 4500-4600kyat/USD in these days.  Inflation was so high in these years. For example, the exchange rate in January 2024 was 3400-3500 kyats / USD. It was 5500-5700 kyats/ USD in September 2024.

We could not exactly calculate the expense / cost of medicine, instruments, reagents, film for X-ray, utensils and etc.  We could not easily find a good quality of medicine, utensils, equipment and etc. in these years. 

Patients have been facing the problem of difficult travelling to come to our clinic because of shortages of fuel for bus/coach, as well as many check points, insecurity, unsafe like land mines, conscription law etc on the way from their places to our Bagan Clinic.

For saving the transportation cost, patients came to clinic by means of organizing groups for cost sharing to hire a truck for more capacity.

Some patients must cross bridges on the way and some bridges are closed at 6pm but some are closed at 4pm. If our treatment to a patient finished at 4pm, he/she could not go back home because the bridge has already been closed and he/she had to sleep another over-night in our clinic or in a shelter on the way.  Some patients especially old ones could not tolerate weather especially cold and hot seasons. 

Patients stay in the building in our Monastery premise for 2-3 nights. In summer, they feel hot and in winter they feel cold.  As you know, the Bagan is situated in Central  Myanmar and there is extreme weather in there. Very hot in summer and very cold in winter. 

Bagan Clinic Activities for November 2024 - an update from Dr Hla Tun

Bagan Clinic is a medical centre which Jan helped to establish and supported throughout the latter part of her life.  She made many visits to Myanmar (formerly Burma), to meet Dr Hla Tun and to visit the centre and the schools, with donations of food and educational supplies.

The following notes and photographs were provided by Dr Hla Tun in December 2024.

Dear Ms. Jan C Ford’s friends,

Good evening there!  I would like to update all of you about our Bagan Clinic's activities for November 2024.  We could treat:

• 36 dental patients
• 8 surgical patients
• 777 general medical patients

Before consultation with a Doctor, patients were checked for blood pressure, pulse oxymeter, pulse rate, and temperature by our staff in the clinic.

A stroke patient was being carried by wife from examination and treatment room to physiotherapy room.

Our Laboratory Technicians are preparing the blood samples and reagents before putting them into the respective Laboratory devices in the Laboratory. 

Penicillin test dose to 4 year old boy for rheumatic fever by one of our nurses. In our country, Streptococcus infection is common and it can cause tonsillitis and rheumatic fever in children and some adults and the consequences are thematic heart disease and nephritis. Thus, we have to treat them with injection penicillin once a month. It is more effective than oral penicillin tablets.

In the Physiotherapy unit, our Physiotherapist is preparing for neck traction to a patient.

In these days, almost all people including patients have been facing many many challenges, such as many check points on the way, weather change (cold season from November to February), shortage of transportation (afraid of armed people) etc travelling to our Bagan Clinic.

Anyhow! We can help patients by means of 

1. Treating their suffering/diseases 
2. Sharing the cost of medicine and surgery as well as transportation 
3. Providing accommodation and one meal since August 6 , 2011, when we started opening our Bagan Clinic with support from our donors, team and our fellow staff. I very much appreciate all of them for their kindness, sympathy, generosity, commitment and etc. Thus, we can sustainably operate our Bagan Clinic since August 2011

Many thanks for your time and support!

Kind regards,

HlaTun

Brewood Hall - Notes from 1980

Throughout her blog, Jan documented as much information about Brewood Hall as she could find.

The following notes are from a pre-digital age and were discovered amongst Jan's business files in the offices of Ford Electronics Limited.  They date from June 1980.  The drawings will, I believe, be Jan's own work.  Jan was a skilled draughtswoman, her office being full of detailed technical drawings of railway signals and track diagrams.

GH