Myanmar (Burma)

Of the 52 million children in Myanmar (Burma), 40% are children and young people. Many don’t have enough to eat and can’t get treatment when they’re ill. One child in ten dies before reaching their fifth birthday and half the country’s children fail to complete their schooling. In May 2008, Myanmar was struck by Cyclone Nargis. Nearly 140,000 people died, more than half of them children.

  • We’ve helped nearly a million people recover from Cyclone Nargis
  • We’re helping children in 480 schools move successfully from home or preschool to primary school
  • We’ve trained 14,000 children to protect themselves from HIV infection

Save the Children in Myanmar

We started work in Myanmar in 1995 and now we work in nine of the country’s 14 states and divisions. In the last year our projects have reached 736,000 children. Our work includes reducing the child mortality rate, helping those affected by HIV and AIDS and building up a community-based system of child protection.

We’re helping children affected by Cyclone Nargis

Over the past year we’ve focused our efforts on helping the 2.4 million people affected by Cyclone Nargis.

We reached 338,000 children with aid items such as food, mosquito nets, blankets, plastic sheeting and 70,000 kits containing essential household items. This was nearly 40% of those severely affected by the cyclone.

We repaired 250 schools and built more than 400 temporary schools to enable nearly 145,000 children to return to school.

We set up clinics to provide health services in more than 80 rural villages, built water-treatment plants so we can deliver clean water to more than 60,000 people and improved health education.

We’re saving children’s lives

Even before Cyclone Nargis, 60,000 children were dying each year from preventable diseases such as whooping cough, measles, diphtheria and diarrhoea.

During the past year we’ve distributed more than 12,000 mosquito nets to prevent children dying from malaria and dengue fever and more than 28,000 malnourished children have benefited from our breastfeeding and community care programmes.

We’re improving the care of young children

We want to give children aged between three and six a good start in life, particularly children from minority ethnic groups who often miss out on a decent education.

Together with the Ministry of Education and UNICEF, we’ve developed and tested a new curriculum to help children move from preschool into primary school. Eventually this curriculum will help 800,000 children entering primary school.

We’re fighting HIV and AIDS

Approximately 0.7% of the adult population of Myanmar has HIV or AIDS. We’re working in 17 of the country’s 325 townships to prevent the spread of HIV and to help those already affected.

During the past year, we trained 14,000 young people in skills to help them protect themselves. More than 100,000 children have taken part in activities and exhibitions on HIV prevention. We’re offering pregnant women and their partners counselling and testing and we’ve set up 16 committees to support children whose families are affected by AIDS.

We’re preventing trafficking

We’re working across six countries in the region to combat child trafficking. We’ve expanded our work on both internal and cross-border trafficking to tackle a range of child protection issues such as physical and sexual abuse, child labour and child recruitment into armed forces.

Find out more

Myanmar related articles

Friday 8 May 2009 Jasmine’s visit to Burma one year on from Cyclone Nargis
Jasmine Whitbread, Chief Executive of Save the Children UK, has just returned from Myanmar (Burma) to see what's been achieved in the year since Cyclone Nargis devastated the delta region in 2008 and what work still needs to be done. View her photo diary.
Saturday 2 May 2009 Burma one year on: how you’ve helped
Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar (Burma) on 2 May 2008 killing 140,000 people, including 70,000 children. It was the worst natural disaster Myanmar had ever experienced, affecting 2.4 million people.
Monday 17 November 2008 Six months on from cyclone Nargis, we help 100,000 children get back to school
New report highlights that education still is not viewed as a critical part of every humanitarian response
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