House calls at a monastery in Wachet Village.
Mingalaba! Hello!
The other day, we paid a house call to a monastery in Wachet Village.
In Myanmar, there are many monasteries where children live. The children living in monasteries often come from other areas in Myanmar, such as Shan State or Kachin State.
There are many difficulties that prevent children from being able to attend school such as poverty, lack of family and schools in their home villages and education disruptions due to civil war in their home states. For these children, the monastery is a place of life and education.
We have been visiting monasteries in Yangon and Mandalay on house call projects for a while.
Many of the children in monasteries suffer from skin diseases due to the crowded living conditions and the hot and humid climate of Myanmar. There are only a few adults looking after a large number of children, and due to the overall financial reality, it is difficult to see a doctor. As a result, children infect and reinfect each other and diseases spread rapidly amongst them. Living with itchy skin due to various conditions is an ordinary part of life.
At the monastery that we visited, there are nearly 100 girls from Shan State and other provinces living as nuns, and around half of them complained about some kind of skin condition. The diseases the children suffered from included scabies from ticks, fungal infections and bacterial infections.
Once the physical symptoms are diagnosed, we provide hygiene guidance such as instructions for how to keep themselves clean and how to maintain clean bedding etc. The goal is to not only improve existing symptoms, but also to prevent them. Washing hands has the benefit of providing protection against Covid-19 as well as skin diseases, so we practiced doing so together while merrily singing.
To support the children’s medical needs, we would like to continue to support them so that they can live and grow in good health.