About

To improve health equity in Myanmar, Access to Health focuses on the most underserved and vulnerable populations under a rights-based approach, bringing services where they are most needed.

Governance

Access to Health is a multi-donor fund set up in January 2019 to support health in Myanmar. The Access to Health Fund is the follow-on mechanism from the Three Millennium Development Goal (3MDG) Fund, which operated for six and a half years and delivered around USD 308 million from 2012 to 2018. The estimated Access to Health budget is USD 252 million over the period 2019-2023.

To improve health equity in Myanmar, Access to Health focuses on the most underserved and vulnerable populations under a rights-based approach. We aim to increase access of vulnerable populations to better and more relevant health services, strengthen the community health system and increase social cohesion.

The Fund is managed by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), which also manages the Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund, the Joint Peace Fund, the Nexus Response Mechanism and is Principal Recipient for The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. By managing all five funding streams, UNOPS increases aid effectiveness, efficiency and quality, and value for money. Risks are lowered through increased knowledge, standardized procedures, and greater transparency. The five streams are sharing facilities, procedures, and standards. At the same time, comprehensive monitoring and financial controls ensure transparency in charging for shared services.

private business sector project

A private-sector-funded 10 million USD project was launched in January 2021. It is a five-year project funded through the Global CSR Program of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, a global, values-based, research and development-driven biopharmaceutical leader headquartered in Japan. With a focus on sustainability, the project aims to strengthen healthcare for underserved communities in Myanmar’s Shan State by improving health infrastructure, providing training and support for health staff, increasing uptake of health services through demand generation activities with local communities, implementing strategic purchasing initiatives and reinforcing the supply chain management of local health providers.

Priorities and principles

Access to Health has two core priorities:

A focus on equity, with the Fund adopting a rights-based approach promoting inclusiveness, and explicitly targeting underserved and vulnerable populations.
A focus on strengthening the local and community health systems, to ensure long-term health benefits for target populations.

In focusing on vulnerable populations, the Fund puts gender and diversity at the centre of its approach, ensuring service provision understands and alleviates barriers to women, girls and vulnerable people’s access to healthcare. The Fund is also guided by a human rights-based approach to health as well as the principles of non-discrimination, participation, and accountability.

The work of Access to Health is shaped by a number of key principles. These include:

Human Rights-Based Approach: The Access to Health Fund promotes accountability, equity, inclusion, non-discrimination, participation; and is committed to the AAAQ Framework (Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, and Quality). The Fund upholds people’s free, active and meaningful participation in health-related decisions, their right to access information, their ability to hold health providers to account through demand generation activities, project information sharing, community engagement activities, and community feedback mechanisms; and that health service providers listen to the voices of people and are accountable in their delivery of quality services.
Promoting Gender Equality: The Access to Health Fund is committed to accelerating efforts to promote gender equality and ensure equal access to health services for people of all genders, by better understanding context and needs, overcoming barriers to healthcare access, and increasing women’s voice and representation.
Sustainability: The Access to Health Fund builds long-term capacity in Myanmar’s health response.
Conflict Sensitivity and Social Cohesion: The Access to Health Fund upholds at all times the principle of “do no harm” and seeks avenues – through its work – to promote social cohesion without challenging or threatening ethnic, cultural, or religious identity.

Flexibility: The Access to Health Fund is open to change and adapts its approach to best deliver on the mission.

Geographies

Access to Health concentrates its interventions in Rakhine, Kachin, Shan, Kayin, Kayah, Chin and Mon. The Fund also supports health care activities in the Yangon Region with a specific focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and Tuberculosis.

Areas of work

Communities and regions in Myanmar have vastly different needs, and our key health interventions are designed to specifically meet the needs of the communities we work in. The Access to Health Fund supports integrated programmes in the areas of maternal newborn and child health, nutrition, sexual and reproductive health and rights, drug use and health consequences, tuberculosis, malaria, disability-inclusive health, COVID-19, emergency response and local health systems strengthening.

Maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH)

This programme aims at improving access to MNCH services for poor and vulnerable populations with the goal of reducing child and maternal mortality in the country. Supported interventions include the provision of antenatal and postnatal care, emergency maternal and child referrals, immunization, nutrition interventions, training for community health workers and volunteers, and improved coordination. The programme integrates interventions from other thematic areas, including nutrition, tuberculosis and malaria. The Fund supports integrated MNCH grants to implementing partners in townships in Chin, Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, Mon, Rakhine and Shan states.

Drug use and its health consequences (HIV Harm reduction)

This support aims to reduce HIV, hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases and other negative health consequences among people who use drugs, their sexual partners and families. Harm reduction activities are delivered in a comprehensive package together with other integrated services for malaria, tuberculosis and sexual and reproductive health and rights services. Community-level harm reduction programmes include prevention through health education, needle/syringe and condom programmes, HIV testing, hepatitis and sexually transmitted infection screening, referral for antiretroviral therapy and overdose prevention and management programmes. The priority areas are Northern Shan and Kachin states due to high needs.

Tuberculosis

The Access to Health Fund serves high-risk populations, which includes people living in congested urban areas, particularly in Yangon and remote areas where higher TB prevalence has been found due to poor access to regular services. The Fund and its partners implement active case-finding activities, particularly among hard-to-reach and vulnerable populations. Mobile teams and newly established clinics help bring TB diagnosis and treatment services closer to the peri-urban poor, industrial workers and migrants.

Health systems strengthening

To ensure the sustainability of investments in essential health services, the Access to Health Fund invests to increase financial protection; increase use of essential health services; improve service provision and service quality; and increase health equity, with increased access for poor, underserved, marginalized and vulnerable people. The Fund also focuses on community systems strengthening, supporting demand generation and health service accountability, community engagement, community feedback mechanisms, and capacity development of community-based health workers.

Emergency response

Access to Health also supports the emergency response to increased health and humanitarian needs in Myanmar since February 2021. Partners deliver emergency health services through mobile clinics, an expanded referral network, engagement with new service providers in the private sector and increased direct support of local partners to ensure vulnerable populations have continued access to essential health services. This includes health services in the areas of maternal, newborn and child health; sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender-based violence.

Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)

This component aims to extend access to sexual and reproductive health services and information and ensure the realization of rights and autonomy related to sexual and reproductive health for vulnerable populations in Access to Health Fund supported areas. The component has a particular focus on adolescents and youth. Interventions are part of the Fund’s programmes for maternal, newborn and child health, and drug use and health consequences, and are also implemented directly. They operate in Chin, Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, Mon, Rakhine and Shan states, Yangon Region and nationwide.

Nutrition

This component aims to improve nutrition among children, especially in the first 1,000 days of life, and pregnant and lactating women. Grants supporting the delivery of the integrated maternal, newborn and child health programme include nutrition activities, such as routine growth monitoring, screening and treatment for malnourished children, establishing referral mechanisms for children with severe acute malnutrition and providing referral support and nutrition counselling at the community level.

Malaria

Access to Health works with partners to improve case detection, treatment and prevention of malaria in Myanmar through rapid diagnostic testing, effective treatment with Artemisinin-based combination therapy and community education on vector-borne diseases. The Fund’s malaria interventions are integrated with maternal, newborn and child health activities and drug use and health consequences programmes via integrated community malaria volunteers (ICMV). Aiming to reduce the incidence of the disease and related mortality rates and complement malaria elimination activities in Myanmar, the Fund’s support focuses particularly on migrants and hard-to-reach populations living in malaria high burden townships in Kachin, Kayin and Chin states.

Disability inclusive health

The Access to Health Fund has integrated disability inclusion across its portfolio of supported health services since the start of the Fund in 2019. The Fund aims to mainstream disability inclusion in health care and ensure that persons with disabilities are able to access quality health services. This work includes awareness raising in communities and with key stakeholders, ensuring that emergency referral support and essential health services are available and accessible to persons with disabilities, providing health education in disability-inclusive formats, and empowering people with disabilities to utilize community-feedback mechanisms.

COVID-19

The Access to Health Fund has supported the coordinated COVID-19 response in Myanmar since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. The Fund supports prevention, testing and treatment activities to mitigate the impact and reduce the spread of COVID-19, particularly among the most vulnerable populations. COVID-19 response activities have been supported nationwide and include awareness raising on infection prevention and control in the communities, contact tracing, screening of returnees at points of entry, infection prevention and WASH support for health facilities and the provision of protective equipment and other medical commodities.