By Moe Moe Oo

A health promoter of Myanmar Business Coalition on AIDS (MBCA) conducts HIV awareness session for caddies at a golf club in Mandalay

“I want to be out of it but I just can’t. I need money to support my mother,” says 20 year old Ma Htwe (not her real name), a commercial sex worker. She wears a face of fresh makeup, her lips were painted just a few minutes ago but her eyes become dull and tearful as she says this.

Ma Htwe lost her father when she was very young and she finds it difficult now to remember what he looked like. As a child, her mother suffered from poor health and Ma Htwe spent most of her time with the neighbours. At the tender age of 12, under the neighbour’s influence she was misguided into commercial sex work. With no food at home, she was happy to be able to make money on her own and buy food for herself and her sick mother. But if she didn’t bring money home, her step-father would beat her.

By June 2010, 8,013 health workers had received specialised malaria training from Three Diseases Fund supported implementing partners. Many of these people live in remote villages where access to health facilities is difficult, and their work is essential in the prevention and immediate diagnosis and response to the disease. This month we speak with three such people working with partner CESVI (Cooperazione E Svilippo Onlus), which operates 20 fixed and 7 mobile malaria clinics covering estimated 500 square miles of malaria endemic uplands in Shan State. CESVI currently works with 454 trained village health workers.

By Phaung Daw Oo

A novice in Yangon ©3DF

My name is Mg Toe Maung. I’m 12 years old and a novice monk.

I am thankful that my unlucky time is over. Now I have the opportunity to attend school regularly and also I don’t have to worry about food, which is offered to the monks by the people. There is also a place for me to live in school.

I am an orphan. Sometimes, when I watch other families, I burst into tears because I miss my parents so much. I know that my parents had so much trouble in their lives and I wonder why they suffered for that disease (HIV/AIDS). I don’t have an answer.

Anyway, I try hard to become what my mother wanted me to be. She wanted me to be an educated person and she always asked others to help me.

My mother told me that my father contracted HIV after I was born. My father’s sisters and brothers didn’t want us to live near them and they gave us a small house far away from their homes. When he died of AIDS, our relatives made us move out. So my mother became hawker and we stayed in other people’s houses – we moved from house to house. Finally, with her work and money stress, my mother also became sick; she also was HIV positive and had to go to the hospital time after time. I asked the nurse there to cure my mother - to please make her stop suffering. The nurse was kind and she told me not to worry and that she would try to cure my mother. After that my mother got better for a while.

By Association Francois-Xavier Bagnoud (AFXB)

To her shock, one day Daw Tin Tin (not her real name) found out she was HIV positive. A 50 year old mother of four, she worked as a cleaner at a hospital in Yangon, and believed that her and her husband had always been loyal to each other. But after falling ill with a fever and a rash, she took a test and it confirmed her worst fears. She lost her job. She did not know how to cope with all those health and social problems. She was depressed and wanted to die.