IMNA
Larger numbers of people have been suffering from Malaria in eastern Ye Township [NMSP territory] according to doctors from local health clinics and facilities run by the New Mon State Party (NMSP).
Adults and children have been admitted to clinics as the start of rainy season has created an environment ideal for breading mosquitoes. “The residence who got sick, including children, [are] about 30 per day, half of them [with] malaria,” explained Mi Pakao Rot who works with the NMSP health department in Pa Nan Paing village. “When we tested 10 patients blood, about 5 to 7 people have malaria. This disease started at the beginning of the raining season; [There was]…not so much at the beginning, but now the disease increase around the villages under the control of the NMSP territory.”
The villages around NMSP territory, including Pa Nan Paing, Joe Kha Bru, Nyi Sar, Chait Teak, Palh Don Phite and Khalocknee, have reported increases in the number of residents stricken with malaria so far this year.
But while rainy season generally begins early every May, this year’s rise in malaria cases appears to be linked with financial difficulties amongst residents, likely caused by poor harvests and increases in inflation due to the military government’s pay hikes for civil servants. Thinking their illness not serious enough to justify the cost of a trip clinic, residents instead opt to visit the local pharmacy for medicine.
“Some people, they do not want to go to meet with the health department when they got sick, they just used the medicine from the shop [with out diagnosis].” a doctor who preferred to remain anonymous said of villagers living around NMSP territory. “Some of them do not have malaria but when they get sick they think, ‘this disease is malaria’, and they use malaria medicine; sometimes they get more sick because they use the wrong medicine.”
Residents who have the lowest incomes are also often more exposed to mosquitoes due to their work as day laborers and field hands. These jobs frequently expose workers to outside conditions or require them to sleep in fields and jungles, often with out protection, that contain pools of standing water.
“Most people who got malaria are day laborers [who work on plantations and farms] because many of [these] people, they start their jobs at this time [of year] during the change in season,” Mi Pakao Rot added. “If they get sick they [don’t know their disease], if they should meet with the doctor or the health department, that they need to use mosquito-nets, [or]… use the clean water.”
