Meet Pyae
14-year-old Pyae is a student in grade nine. She lives with her parents and her six siblings in a village in Bago Division. Her father is a subsistence farmer but also works as a mechanic after the harvest. Her four older siblings work on the farm helping their father. Her two older brothers also help their father when he works as a mechanic. Her mother is a homemaker who looks after her Pyae's two younger siblings. Her two older sisters help their mother with housework when they are not working in the field. The income Pyae's father earns combined with the rice they harvest is just enough to cover their expenses and pay for basic healthcare.
One evening in August 2019, Pyae developed a fever, felt exhausted and had difficulty breathing. When she continued to feel unwell a month later,
her parents brought her first to the village health worker, before bringing her to a private clinic in town. They were advised to brin her to a specialist hospital in Bago, which her parents did in September 2019. Pyae was admitted at the specialist hospital twice, receiving blood transfusions and injections costing Pyae’s parents a total of 1,100,000 kyat (approx. 1,100 USD). Three days after she was discharged from her second admission, she developed another fever. The doctor from the specialist hospital referred Pyae to Pinlon Hospital (PLH) in Yangon for further investigation and treatment. Only then did Pyae and her parents received a diagnosis for Pyae’s condition - she was diagnosed with mitral valve regurgitation and they were told that she would need surgery to replace one of the valves in her heart. The doctor told them that her surgery would cost 10,000,000 kyat (approx. 10,000 USD). When Pyae’s parents told the doctor that they could not afford to pay such a large sum, the doctor told them about an organisation who might be able to help. The doctor then asked his staff to refer Pyae to Health For All (HFA), a partner of PLH, for assistance accessing treatment.
With the support of HFA, Pyae was admitted at PLH for her heart surgery on 14 February 2020. Three days later, she received surgery to replace the valve in her heart. Before the operation, she and her parents were told about her treatment and the surgical procedure. She was also well attended to after her surgery. On 26 February 2020 Pyae was discharged from the hospital.
Before surgery, Pyae would often feel tired, could not walk long distances, felt very tired when she walked up stairs and would easily forget what she had read while studying. But since her surgery, Pyae can climb up the stairs and walk for a longer period of time without feeling tired. She still has a little bit of pain at the site of her surgical wound, but she hopes that this will disappear soon. Pyae’s mother said, “The treatment changed my daughter's life. Before I thought she should drop out of school because she used to feel tired and would easily forget what she had learned in school. But now, she does not have to drop out of school, and I hope that she can study well in the future.”
Pyae hopes to become a nurse one day. “I want to become a nurse because of my experience and because I know how difficult it is being a patient,” she said. “So, I can empathize with patients. I also want to take care of them.”