Emergency healthcare

As AFP reports, hundreds of medical helpers like Sam crisscross Myanmar's impoverished eastern border areas to deliver medicine, treatment and education to Karen and other ethnic minority villagers who lack access to even basic healthcare.

From their base in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, members of the Back Pack Health Worker Team smuggle medicine across the porous frontier, fleeing at any sign of soldiers loyal to the government of Myanmar.

The non-profit organization, which relies on donations, says that since it was created in 1998, nine medics and a midwife have been killed by regime troops or their landmines, most recently in July 2010. Several others have been imprisoned.

Cross-border medical help

The organization has about 300 medics serving a target population of about 180,000 vulnerable and displaced people spread across 320 villages in areas including Karen, Karenni, Mon, Arakan, Kachin and Shan states. Each team, made up of about three to five medics, returns to Thailand around twice a year for training and to collect supplies.

They travel for several months at a time, spending at least three days in each village they visit and covering as much as 1,000 kilometers (about 620 miles) on a single trip. Sometimes rebel soldiers provide a security escort if the situation is dangerous.

While their links to the armed groups raise questions about their neutrality, the medics say they are simply filling a void left by the absence of international aid groups or state healthcare workers.

Malaria is killer number one

Myanmar has been plagued by decades of civil war between pro-regime troops and armed ethnic minority rebels, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced. More than half of all deaths in Myanmar's eastern conflict zones are from treatable illnesses. According to a study published last year. Malaria is the number one killer.

Child mortality rates are nearly double the official national figure, while maternal mortality is three times as high, according to the study by groups including the Back Pack Health Worker Team and Burma Medical Association.

The Myanmar government spends about seven US dollars per person on health each year, among the lowest in the world, according to a 2009 report by the United Nations. Just 1.8 percent of government spending goes into health.

As long as people in their communities are sick and dying from a lack of healthcare, the backpack medics say they will continue their work, despite the risks. "If we don't do this no outsider will come and do it for us," says Saw Poe Aye.

Myanmar has endured half a century of military rule and while a civilian government is now nominally in charge after a widely criticized election last year, its ranks are filled with former generals. Fighting still rages in some areas and a recent call by the government for ceasefire talks has been met with skepticism.

AFP
Editor: Manasi Gopalakrishnan