Published health research on prisoners in Myanmar is rare. Very rare. Here is an exception.

https://www.mdpi.com/2414-6366/5/1/4/pdf

Some steps in that HIV care cascade need improvement.

Note that ethical approval was obtained. Congrats to the Ministry of Health and Sports, the Prison Department, and the Union.

Jamie

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Abstract: Prisoners have a higher HIV prevalence and higher rates of attrition from care as compared
with the general population. There is no published evidence on this issue from Myanmar. We assessed
(1) HIV test uptake, HIV positivity, and enrollment in care among newly admitted prisoners between
2017 and 18 (2) Treatment outcomes among HIV-positive prisoners enrolled in care between 2011 and
18. This was a cohort study involving secondary analysis of program data. Among 26,767 prisoners
admitted to the Mandalay Central Prison between 2017 and 2018, 10,421 (39%) were HIV-tested,
547 (5%) were HIV-positive, and 376 (69%) were enrolled in care. Among the 1288 HIV-positive
prisoners enrolled in care between 2011 and 2018, 1178 (92%) were started on antiretroviral therapy.
A total of 883 (69%) were transferred out (post-release) to other health facilities, and among these,
only 369 (42%) reached their destination health facilities. The final outcomes (censored on 30 June
2019) included the following: (i) Alive and in care 495 (38%), (ii) death 138 (11%), (iii) loss to follow-up
596 (46%), and (iv) transferred out after reaching the health facilities 59 (5%). We found major
gaps at every step of the HIV care cascade among prisoners, both inside and outside the prison.
Future research should focus on understanding the reasons for these gaps and designing appropriate
interventions to fill these gaps.