A Case for Universal Healthcare

Ruom worked closely with the ILO to put together a series of photos, videos and testimonies about health coverage in Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.

For seventy years, Thong Theuud had not once been to a hospital. There’s no secret to her health, she says – she led a simple life, gave birth to seven children and worked on her farm to make enough money to send them to school. But recently, she woke up in tremendous pain. Not knowing what to do, she called her children, who informed her that treatment and the hospital was free of charge.

One day in November, not long after he fed his family’s chickens, Vuong Quoc Nhat began feeling nauseated. Shortly after, he had to vomit. “Everything I ate, I just vomited,” he says. Together with his mother, he went to the hospital, where a kidney diseases was diagnosed. On his journey to recovery, he was transferred from hospital to hospital, and quickly realized that he needed to get insurance to continue his treatment.

As an obstetrician and a mother of two, See Lor says she can relate to her patients, and often feels for them, particularly if what was meant to be a simple delivery turned into a complicated surgery. “Especially if they needed a C-section, they‘d have to sell their land or cattle to pay for it,” she says. Now, people now longer need to worry about the costs, as everyone is covered by the national health insurance.