SPHC Myanmar - Reflection from Professor Anil Kumar Indira Krishna about HealpAge Myanmar participation on 11th GMS conference in Laos and SPHIP annual meeting

Partner capacity building, including international learning exchanges, was one of the main activities of the SPHIP project. The regional conference in Laos was successful in providing learning and experience sharing opportunities and challenges faced during the implementation of the project in the past five years.  In addition, it added value on international capacity building for HelpAge and its partners University of Public Health and University of Medicine 2, as presenters and participants in this regional conference.

They also learned best practices and challenges in implementation of public health programs across the region. The platform has given opportunity for representatives from countries that have been implementing projects under SPHIP.  One of the sessions was on the identified topics from three countries Myanmar, Bangladesh and Lao PDR on improving access in health care services through community-based interventions.  The presenters have been provided examples of utilizing existing community structure in achieving UHC.  As a participant I was overwhelmed with the political representation,  from Bangladesh who presented innovative community-based financing system that will be have potential for scale up.

In addition, SPHIP project team members got the opportunity to learn how potential collaboration will be developed among research institutes in different countries on common agendas in the “Collaboration between research institutes and community for improving equity” symposium in which experiences from different countries with SPHIP projects were shared with the conference participants together.

Overall, the conference was successful in bringing together academics, programme implementers and policy makers and provided opportunities for delegates from government and our project to learn of many possible future areas of collaboration.