The Development Of Health Protection Since Myanmar’s Independence

Myanmar is one of the developing countries in the world with abundant natural resources, however, Myanmar’s slow economic development since 1962 due to political instability and long-term policy failures in political and economy which made it become one of the less developed countries in the world. The bad health status and backward health protection led to people’s low health level.Thus, it is an inevitable choice for Myanmar to get rid of the poverty. As a part of the national modernization, the modernization of health development can improve the Burmese people’s life and health level, therefore, it has important value on the study of Myanmar’s health protection. It can fill gaps in the related areas, and it also can make people realize the shortages of the development in Burma’s health protection, which can set examples for the latter health care reform.Be themed by the health protection, this paper mainly studies the development of the health protection in Myanmar after independence. The government is the dominant factor to promote the development of health protection in Myanmar, thus, the article firstly introduces the health policy and measures enacted and taken by the successive governments after Myanmar’s independence, at the same time,they pay attention to develop the western medicine as well as the traditional medicine. In the second place, this paper illustrates the development of the health protection status through particularly expounding the achievements and the disadvantages in the development of health protection, the article also emphatically discusses the contributions of the Non-Governmental Organizations and the international aid for the development of health protection in Myanmar. In the end, this paper uses the modernization theory to evaluate Myanmar’s health modernization degree from three health indicators of the Ingels-Tongxiang evaluation system--the life expectancy at birth, infant mortality and medical service level.It is to be found that these three indicators all don’t meet the requirements of the index, which led to a conclusion that Myanmar’s medical and health protection is still very backward, and far behind the other countries, even the other countries of the southeast Asia. Backward economy and unstable domestic situation badly restricted the improvement of Myanmar’s modernization development of medical and health protection as well as people’s health situation. Therefore, it is a long way to realize the modernization of the health protection development for Myanmar.