Aspirations and attitudes towards medical professionalism and awareness of medical ethics among Final Part 2 MBBS students in Myanmar Medical Universities.

The cross-sectional descriptive study being conducted in 2012 explored the aspirations and attitudes of the Final Part 2 MBBS students towards medical professionalism and their awareness of medical ethics. A total of 920 students from four Medical Universities in Myanmar responded to the self-administered questionnaire. Less than 65% of their parents were graduates and nearly half (48.5%) of them earned their living by own business. Sixty five percent of students admitted their career ambition during high school period as becoming a medical doctor. They had attended the Medical University due to family influence (22.1%), high scores in Basic Education High School examination (22.8%) and their desire for monetary gains (23.5%). Almost all (90%)accepted medical profession as noble and 65.7% of respondents cited that they were fond of giving care to patients. Regarding their attitudes toward medical professionalism, more than 90% of the respondents agreed towards principles of fair distribution of finite resources, honesty with patients, a necessity to improve quality of care, ability to manage conflict of interest and professional self regulation. Only 5.5% of students disagreed that periodic recertification was desirable. Nearly half (45.8%) of them disagreed on improving an access to care regardless of patient’s ability to pay,and also on increasing scientific knowledge by encouraging their patients to participate in clinical trials (63%). For future aspiration, 40.4% of respondents intended to join the government service, of whom 71.6% expected to become clinicians. Eighty seven percent of the students agreed to teach Medical ethics as a separate subject and they preferred group discussions. So, to review and revise the existing curriculum for medical ethics is necessary to improve the professional skills of students.

Prevalence trend of youth smoking in 29 Townships of Bago, Magwe and Mandalay Divisions, September 1999

In 1999 September a cross-sectional analytic study was conducted in 29 townships of Mandalay. Magwe and Bago divisions of Myanmar. Randomly selected 2074 urban and 1781 rural 15-24 year old youths from 4808 households were interviewed. 5.6 per cent of females and 67.6 per cent of male youths reported as current smokers. At age 14, 37 per cent of the boys smoked. At age 17, more than half of males smoked, and, at age 22 and older, nearly 80 per cent of them were already smoking. Girls started smoking later than boys. Only 1 per cent of 15-year-old girls smoked. When the females reached age 22-24, approximately 10 per cent of them smoked. Comparing different youth cohorts, the younger started smoking earlier than the older youths. Median age of starting tobacco smoking for the 16 year old males was 16; that was approximately 3 years earlier than the median age of smoking for the 24 years old males.

The effect of combination of chloroquine with sulfadoxine pyrimethamine on patients with uncomplicated falciparum malaria

The effect of chloroquine, sulfadoxine- pyrimethamine and chloroquine plus sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine were studied on 97 patients with uncomplicated falciparum malaria. 53. 1 per cent of the patients were resistant to chloroquine at R2 and R3 level. Among patients treated with sulfadoxine- pyrimethamine, 25 per cent were resistant to the same level. But, when chloroquine is combined with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine only 12.1 per cent of the patients were resistant at R2 level. There were no patients who were resistant at R3 level to the combined drugs. All the patients were free from toxicity that can be related to the two drugs. Apart from simple additive effect, there may also have the potentiating effect of combining two drugs. Hence for a developing country like Myanmar with the problem of multidrug resistance, this method of treatment may be considered for semi-immune patients with uncomplicated falciparum malaria.