#07.20.15 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

planhte · 9 years ago

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07.20.15

Yeah so I didn��t write yesterday. Got home late, went out to dad’s birthday dinner, you know, the works.

So yesterday I decided to sleep in ‘cause I was tired and went to sleep late the night before so instead of waking up at 7:40 I woke up at 8:30, yay! Made it out to the train on time, although my train wasn’t. A measly 2 minutes late, no big deal right? Well I got to my stop and went into the station to say hi to Joe who wasn’t there so I started walking. Bus doesn’t come for another 6 minutes I thought so I walked leisurely. I got to the top of the hill, 5 minutes until the bus comes, right? WRONG I look over and sure enough there’s my bus, pulling away. I start running out of habit--I’m usually late to things--but stop myself. It’s already pulling away and there would be no way I could reach the next stop in time. So I check my phone to see when the next one comes. ONE HOUR. *Miranda voice* Are you k’eeding me?

So what do I do? I walk back down the hill and I sit in the station because it’s already 80° at 9:28 and I’m all sweaty. It’s been 20 minutes and I’m on my phone, still trying to figure out my app. I click on my route again and see that there is another bus that goes by my stops and it was coming in 6 minutes. I SPRINT to the stop, running across the street and almost getting run over and sure enough, there iT IS right at the light :) yay me!

I got in late but that’s okay because I didn’t do much. My other other other lab mate came back from vacation and I’ve been trying super hard to get on her good side and like me. Kind of working out...ish. I also have been stressed about my project I’m doing at work. I mean, it’s cool that I have so much independence considering it’s my very own project and I can basically do anything I want, but I don’t know what to do. I need some guidance but every time I try to go to my mentor to ask for help, she’s with someone or not even there. I just hope it all works out and I have lab meeting tomorrow which means I’m gonna have to bullshit some stuff. Greeeaaat.

But anyways, she came back and we ll got reacquainted. She and my other lab mate have known each other for a while so they talked and caught up but that was basically my first encounter with her so it was tense to say the least.

We went down for lunch, the three of us, and I saw the other lab down there--they always eat lunch together including the hot graduate guy (eeep!). And it was nATIONAL COTTON CANDY DAY aka they were selling cotton candy, not the teeny carnival one but those huge ones the size of your head! Devon bought one for me ‘cause she’s a volunteer so she has a meal voucher but her total went over the amount so she had to pay $.25 but when we got back into the lab I paid her back $.30--I’m such a good tipper, I know.

After that the lab was pretty boring. I took off pupal casings of different stages of pupa, fileted some larva and examined the nasty ones from the other week. Good times. Oh and one of the girls was flipping flies and she messed up so so flies flew everywhere and it was so graceful the way they flew away and infested the room.

I was working on something--de-pupal-case-ing--when Dara came in and was like “sweetie, you have to go! you’re gonna be late!!!1!!1!!” so I threw everything away and ran out and luckily made my bus on time, then the train, woo!

It was my dad’s birthday so we went out to eat at his favourite restaurant Bonefish! It was really good but we didn’t end up going there until 8:30pm and my cousin who’s staying with us came. It was good though. I got this tuna bowl similar to a chipotle bowl and it was nice, but I was so full from the ap’s I didn’t finish my mashed potatoes. Then Anna and Alli went to get frozen yogurt/boba tea from this yogurt place nearby.

We got home really late and I was up helping my mom with stuff so I couldn’t write. Well actually I could but that would’ve been weird with her looking over my shoulder so that’s that. I texted Sam and I miss her a lot. I wish she weren’t in California. We are like the same person, literally, when people see pictures of her they think it’s me and vice versa. AAAANd she and I have the same Myers Briggs personality infj wooo. I only remember it ‘cause it is spelled almost like info except with a twist like nope not gonna be an o, j. This is what my brain thinks...merpy.

Darn. I was hoping to make these recaps smaller but they don’t seem to be getting any shorter. If anything, they’re getting lengthier and I don’t know how to feel about it. I mean it’s nice I have so many (nice) things to talk about but it’s the fact that when I look at the sheer size of this even I don’t wanna read it all.

Welp thanks for reading I’m gonna write what happened today and also update my lab journal because I have not done so, whoops!

Goooood night :3

#07.20.15 #day in the life

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nmahakan · 9 years ago

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07/20/15: Interviews at Mae Tao Clinic

Today, our goal was to interview staffs and patients at MTC for more insights for our solution. The first person we were able to interview was Ehnila, a 32-year-old registration staff who has been working at MTC for 9 years. Ehnila was born in a village in Myanmar and moved with his family to the Mae La refugee camp during the 1988 student uprising. He grew up in the refugee camp and was able to receive health worker training through the post-10 program at the camp. After becoming a community health worker, Ehnila returned to his village in Myanmar to work for a while, before he eventually came to MTC as an employee. Ehnila’s story sparked the idea for us to train health workers who are from the communities that we want to target. Since they will already have a stronger connection with that community, they will have more desire to go back and help out. This way, there will be incentive that isn’t monetary based and would have a greater social impact!

Another staff that we got a chance to interview was Dr. Mary, a pediatric doctor and clinical consultant at MTC. Dr. Mary got involved with MTC by volunteering as a clinical consultant for a year and decided to come back and work a couple more years at MTC after a year of working as a pediatric doctor in the UK. She really enjoys working at MTC because the way the health care system there operates is so unique compared to healthcare systems in the UK and other parts of the world. The role that she plays at MTC is to act as a resource and support for the medics and staffs who are doing the majority of the direct patient care. She is available to them for severe cases that they are not as experienced dealing with and also conducts continuing medical education for the staffs. She was able to tell us about some of the most common barriers that would prevent displaced Burmese from accessing healthcare services right away, some of which included financial burdens, not knowing how to get to MTC, waiting for an illness to get better on its own, and family commitments. When we brought up our concern on how the information about the new location of MTC would be spread and the issue of transportation there, Dr. Mary explained that she was not too worried about this, since word of mouth among the migrant community is a pretty effective way of distributing information. She feels that wherever there is a need for transporting people, transportation services like songthaew and motorbike taxis will follow. Another very important aspect that she emphasized to us regarding the services and programs that MTC provides was the focus on strengthening the health systems in the ethnic states by training health workers from those areas to go back to their communities in Myanmar, where the greatest needs for more health services are. This also inspired us to come up with a similar solution that would focus on training and providing more basic health services and health education for communities on the Thai side of the border as well.

As for interviewing the patients, we spoke with 29-year-old Win Thita who was currently at the clinic to get her 3 year old son, Pyee Pyo Aung, a treatment for his cold and vaccinations. She has lived along the Thai-Myanmar border for one year and has been trying to farm beans, but recently she has made little profit. We learned that she could never go to the hospital in Myanmar since she had low income and transportation was too expensive. She had never heard of MTC until she came to Thailand. When her son recently came to the hospital for the cold, the health worker used this as an opportunity to vaccinate him. They both received vaccines in Myanmar from NGOs, however, they never were aware of which vaccines they received. In addition, unlike the NGOs in her Burmese community, she stated that patients actually receive vaccination cards at MTC. She also said that in order to get to MTC, there are no checkpoints she must pass and it only costs 100 baht to get a motorbike taxi. Overall, she felt there were no barriers to coming to MTC and will even encourage her sons who still go to school in Myanmar to come to MTC too. Interestingly, she realizes the importance of vaccines, but she doesn’t know which vaccines her son received. During our interview she lacked emotion and only made eye contact with her child whom she cared for greatly. She aspired for better health for her family and was motivated by a desire to get her son treated. After this interview we wanted to incorporate some way of increasing education on the importance of vaccines and the types of vaccines that children and adults should receive. Also, since she was responsible for spreading awareness on MTC to her family in Myanmar, we wanted to expand on the use of mothers as a health awareness resource for our solution. Lastly, since she was not aware of the MTC until she came to Thailand, this stressed the need for increasing awareness on the MTC services.

At MTC’s prosthetic department, we spoke with 44-year-old Kyaw Poe Pra and 28-year-old Ku Lar. Both of these men had their legs amputated and were given prosthetics at MTC after landmine accidents while working in their corn farms in Myanmar. Kyaw Poe Pra currently works small, periodical jobs as a garden caretaker in Myanmar, while Ku Lar works at a farm in Myanmar. When both of their accidents occurred, their employers took them to Mae Sot Hospital since the hospitals in Myanmar are too expensive. Their legs were amputated there. They said that they were then referred to MTC for their free prosthetics, regular dressing changes, and physical therapy appointments under the ICRC landmine victim program. Whenever they cross the border to use MTC, all they have to do is show their prosthetic legs and the police at the checkpoints allow them to cross without paying a fee. Prior to their accidents, they were not aware of MTC’s services and never used any health services in Myanmar due to the high cost of treatment. They prefer all Thai health services than any Myanmar’s services, however, between MTC and Mae Sot Hospital, they both prefer MTC since they have happier interactions with the health workers and there is no language barrier. However, they both admitted that they are burdened by the cost of transportation in order to come to MTC and they would prefer if there was a closer clinic in Myanmar. We also learned that neither of them had received any landmine education prior to their accidents. They said that they aspire to have normal lives regardless of their condition and are motivated by the idea that accessing health services may help improve their quality of life. After this interview, we began to stress the importance of increasing health education and health services awareness into our solution via discussions, word of mouth, workshops, or pamphlets.

In MTC’s Reproductive Health Outpatient department, we got a chance to speak with a pregnant woman named Su Su Kaing. She is a 23-year-old woman who used to work in the garment factory in Mae Sot. Now that she is pregnant with her first child, she no longer works there. Currently, she lives in the Mae Sot area and goes to MTC regularly for her pregnancy checkups. She said that she never used any other health services before, and learned about MTC by word of mouth from her old workplace. When we asked her “what is the first thing she does when she gets sick?” she immediately replied that she would go directly to MTC. She mentioned that she really likes the services there and since she lives very close by, there is no trouble with transportation. Like many other pregnant women we talked to, she seemed to care about her child’s well-being very much. She was also very open to share her information with us. This interview shows how successful MTC is, to people who live close to it and how good their services are to Burmese migrants. In addition, it also shows how word of mouth can be used to spread the awareness of MTC’s services. This interview inspired us to find a way in our solution to use mothers as a gateway for others to gain the knowledge they need to access healthcare.

Lastly, in MTC’s Maternal Health Inpatient department, we spoke with 36-year-old Than Than Htay who was there to deliver her baby boy. She is from Myawaddy, and says that she heard about MTC through other people living in Myawaddy. She said that MTC is pretty well known there. She has her own car so transportation to MTC is not an issue. Than Than also has a 17-year-old son and shared with us that she had a son who passed away due to Dengue at the age of 5. She had initially taken him to Myawaddy hospital in Myanmar. However, after 4 days with no improvement in his condition, she decided to take him to Mae Sot Hospital in Thailand. Unfortunately, at that point, his condition was so severe that he passed away the next day. Than Than was a little reluctant to participate in our interview at first, understandably considering she was coming to MTC to deliver her baby and was not too far from going into labor, but after talking with her for a while, she seemed very comfortable and willing to share her story with us. From listening to Than Than’s story it really reinforced ideas we had about the poor quality of healthcare services in Myanmar and proved the necessity of better healthcare access for people like Than Than who live along the Thai-Myanmar border. After speaking with her, we began thinking of ways that we could make health a more casual conversation within communities, such as by creating community health gatherings, so that diseases such as dengue fever could be prevented.

We learned so much from all the interviews we did today. After we got back to Phannu House, we worked as a team to create a poster that summarize what we learned today and that concluded our day.

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#text #entry 33 #Interviews at Mae Tao Clinic #07.20.15 #nmahakan #thailand #abroad

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