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The Latest News from the World of Public Health

Profiles by Mike Field

MYANMAR
Thein Thein Htay
In the nine months Thein Thein Htay, MHS ’00, spent studying in Baltimore, she remembers sleeping only about four hours a night. “There was so much to learn,” says Htay, who has the distinction of being the first Gates Scholar to graduate from the School. (Instituted in 1999 as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, the program each year brings a few exceptional mid-career professionals from around the world to the School for graduate study in population and reproductive health.) Initially trained as a physician in her native Myanmar (the country formerly known as Burma), she gradually became immersed in public health policy through her position as a health director in the Ministry of Health. But the more involved she became, the more she realized she needed to know. 

“Previously I had very limited exposure to international programs, so to go to Baltimore was a very educating experience,” Htay says. At home she obtained the most current information by quizzing the occasional aid worker who came through on official business; through persistence she was able to convince her supervisors of the need to study abroad. It was a move that made a critical difference for her. “When I returned, I felt very confident and began briefing my bosses at the ministerial level,” says Htay.

Htay’s new expertise was quickly recognized, and the following year she was called upon to help draft the reproductive health policy for Myanmar in her capacity as head of the maternal and child health and birth spacing section of the Ministry of Health. A closed country with relatively little outside contact, Myanmar officially encourages large families. Contraceptives are available—the Pill and injectables are the preferred methods, says Htay—but abortion is illegal.

Htay recognized that important child and maternal health needs were going unrecognized in her country. “Women bear by far the greatest burden of reproductive health problems, as there is a lack of information and services,” she says. The new government policy aims to reduce the maternal mortality rate to less than one per thousand live births, and to cut the infant mortality rate (currently at about 60 per 1,000 live births) in half.

Htay’s efforts are winning widespread recognition, and she reports significant international support from United Nations and non-governmental agencies. With a chronically understaffed office, she spends an average of three weeks a month visiting and monitoring the nation’s 324 townships, where policy is administered at the local level. But it is at the very highest levels where she hopes to bring about the greatest change. “Leaders at the ministerial level have never had a chance to understand the real need for reproductive health in our country,” she says. “As yet, they are quite far from that knowledge. I am trying to request that the UN and NGOs give more emphasis to this.”

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