YANGON- International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will be participating in the project of healthcare services for the prisoners being implemented by the Ministry of Health and Sports, according to sources.

The ICRC will carry out healthcare services in Shan State (Lashio), Kachin and Rakhine States in collaboration with the health ministry as well as also basic infrastructures tasks such as construction of hospitals and rural health departments.

The Ministry of Health and Sports, together with the Ministry of Home Affairs, are now planning to draw the strategy of National Prison healthcare service project-2018-19 aiming to provide qualified healthcare services to the inmates.

Prison inmates are most vulnerable with limited access to disease prevention and treatment. Some inmates are in need of medical treatments as well as the prisons and prison service camps are overcrowded. The living conditions of overcrowded prisons and labour camps caused transmission sites for infectious diseases such as TB, HIV, hepatitis and cholera.  

Thus the health ministry discussed about providing of better healthcare services at the prisons and labour camps with the prison departments in collaboration with the Ministry of Home Affairs, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, World Health Organization and Three Millennium Development Goal Fund.