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.
