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Our Mother Teresa

“Everybody knows of what Dr Cynthia Maung has done on the border for Burmese refugees, as well as for people from Burma who are finding it very difficult to get medical care on our side of the border. It is a sad reflection on the state of things in Burma that many people from our side of the border feel impelled to cross the border to go to Dr Cynthia Maung for treatment. But it is also proof of her great compassion and the importance of what she is doing.

We need more people like Cynthia Maung. I am particularly happy that she belongs to the Karen ethnic group; because it helps the world to realize that Burma is a country of many peoples. It is not just made up of the majority Burmese, but of others like the Karens, the Mons, the Kachins, the Chins, the Shans, the Arakanese, and many other smaller ethnic groups.

When it comes to humanitarian issues, there is no question of difference of race, or difference of citizenship, or difference of religion. Humanitarian aid should be given without consideration of these matters. For this reason, I am extremely grateful to Dr Cynthia Maung. What she has done for our people, and what she has done for our country, has shown that we have people like her in our country - people who care and people who will build up the future of our country”…Daw Aung San Suu Kyi expressed her words of admiration for Dr. Cynthia Maung on the occasion of John Humphrey's freedom award ceremony.

Burma's Mother Teresa or Dr. Cynthia Maung was born December 6, 1959, and grew up in a woven bamboo house on a narrow dirt lane in the outskirts of the Burmese city of Moulmein. She was the fourth of eight children of a Karen family. Her father was a health assistance.

Dr. Cynthia finished her medical education near the end of Socialist Dictatorship era in Burma. After medical school, Dr. Cynthia trained at several hospitals in and around Rangoon, including North Okkalapa General Hospital. North Okkalapa is normally a sleepy neighborhood. But in 1988 North Okkalapa was where "soldiers knelt in formation and fired repeatedly at demonstrators in response to an army captain's orders," according to a U.S. State Department report. "The first deaths were five or six teenage girls....(Throughout Rangoon) deaths probably numbered over two thousand, but actual numbers can never be known."

When, in 1988, Burma's military junta launched its bloody crackdown against democracy advocates, packing a few clothes and a medical reference book, Dr. Cynthia fled, together with some pro-democracy student activists, across the border to Thailand, sleeping in fields by day and walking through jungles at night. Traveling at night to evade army hit squads, Dr. Cynthia and 14 colleagues trekked through the jungle for seven days, stopping only to treat the sick and injured they came across with the few supplies they had carried.  In Mae Sot, Thailand, she joined other exiles. Trauma and illness were rampant among the refugees. In a dilapidated building with bare dirt floors, Dr. Cynthia went to work. And the Mae Tao clinic was born into existence.

She expected to return to Burma in three months. But more than fifteen years after, Dr. Cynthia is still on the border. Over these years the Mae Tao Clinic has grown from a small house serving Burmese pro-democracy students fleeing the 1988 crackdown to a multi-specialty center providing free health care for refugees, Burmese migrant workers and others crossing the border from Burma into Thailand.

Though exact numbers are difficult because of the fluidity of its patient population, the Clinic serves a target population of around150,000 on the Thai-Burma border. Its staff of 5 physicians, 80 health care workers, 40 trainees and 40 support staff provide comprehensive health services including inpatient and outpatient medicine, trauma care, blood transfusion, reproductive health, child health, eye care, and prosthetics for landmine survivors.       

Each year the Clinic trains a new class of medics to serve people throughout the border region.

The Mae Tao Clinic’s reach extends far beyond its base in Mae Sot. It supports mobile clinics serving Burma’s internally displaced persons (IDP).  The Clinic’s community service programs include a home at Umphium Mae refugee camp for unaccompanied children.

The Clinic also supports schools and boarding houses that serve the families of local migrant workers and our staff. In addition it sponsor women's organizations, health education and community awareness events at refugee camps.

Because of all her noble efforts to help poor refugees, Dr. Cynthia Maung has received many honors. These include the Jonathan Mann Health and Human Rights Award, The John Humphries Award, and the American Women’s Medical Association President’s Award. Because of the clinic’s reputation, visitors from all over the world, many of them health professionals, come to volunteer their time for clinical and educational activities. She has also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The fascist military junta has accused her of working with rebel groups, and in 1997 their forces destroyed a network of small clinics she had created inside Myanmar to serve people with no other health care.

But Dr Cynthia is determined to carry on the work she started since 1988.

In her acceptance speech for 1999 John Humphrey Freedom Award, Dr. Cynthia Maung expressed her vision on Burma………

…..“The fact that I and hundreds of thousands of other refugees are unable to return to Burma testify to the continuing lack of basic human rights in our country.

Refugees and migrants are continuing to flee Burma in huge numbers. Back in 1989 when I first opened a clinic at the border to treat displaced Burmese, our annual caseload was about 2000. This year it has reached 25,000.

Most of the patients we treat are migrants from Burma working near the Thai border town of Mae Sot. There are well over 100,000 migrants working in factories and farms in this area, part of a total Burmese migrant population in Thailand of well over a million. These migrants came from all over Burma, many have fled the civil war and the regime’s policies of forced relocation and forced labour, as well as other human rights abuses. Many have simply been unable to survive in Burma because of the regime’s economic policies, which are causing mass poverty and loss of livelihoods. Therefore, in one way or another, all these people are refugees. The health problems of refugees are a clear indication of the regime’s neglect of the basic rights to health care for the Burmese population.

At one time Burma was considered one of the Southeast Asia’s richest countries, with immense natural resources and a highly skilled and literate population. Today, the country is in severe economic crisis, the universities have remained closed for most of the last 10 years and with much of the national budget going to defense, Burma now has one of the poorest health records in the region.

Many doctors and health workers have been forced to resign or been imprisoned because of political activism since 1988. This has led many of them to go abroad. At the same time, the lack of government support for public health facilities and staff throughout the country has forced many health professionals to change their professions in order to survive.

Every day at the border we can see evidence of the collapse of Burma’s health system. Malaria and tuberculosis are rampant, and people have no knowledge of prevention or proper treatment. Women have little knowledge of family planning and often use abortion as a means of birth control. At our clinic this year, we have already had 235 cases of abortion complications, most of which were performed by unqualified traditional birth attendants from Burma. Twenty-six (26) per cent of the cases were teenaged girls. We are also seeing increasing numbers of people with HIV. One NGO working on AIDS in Burma has recently estimated that 2.5 per cent of Burmese people or over 1 million people are already infected with the AIDS virus.

To address this health crisis, my colleagues and I have been working with displaced communities along the border, training local health workers who can provide health education and care for their people. We have now trained over 200 health workers from different ethnic opposition groups. They have now set up a joint health outreach programme, which is able to assist over 100,000 people in the border areas of Burma.

We hope, that when democracy is restored, our work will lay the foundation for a new and equitable health infrastructure in our country.

As well as our health work, we need to educate, encourage and empower individuals and communities to struggle for their human rights, including the protection of women’s and children’s rights and the rights of the poor. We believe that by sharing responsibilities and long term commitment we can change the situation smoothly and gradually.

We urge the international community to help us in our struggle against the military dictatorship in Burma and to withhold any assistance that can be used by the regime to prolong its grip on power.”

Compiled and composed by Dr. Tayza

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Comments

_ What she said at the ceremony 1999 John Humphrey Freedom Award is " …..“The fact that I and hundreds of thousands of other refugees are unable to return to Burma testify to the continuing lack of basic human rights in our country". She is not only well educated woman but high moral in order to maintain and restore basic human rights ,justice in our motherland and even the world that She has also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.I have really appreciated her works and have been believing to get more peopled in Burma like Dr. Cynthia Maung................by Bo Bo Win

_ This is really great-nice pictures :)...Keep up with the good work!.................by Raluca

_ Burma needs more women like Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Su Su Nway, Dr Cynthia Maung and Nang Charm Tong who so selflessly and relentlessly contruibute to Burma that they have been well recognized as prominent persons. At the same time, more men apart from Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, etc. should devote their efforts to democratization in Burma, stepping into the road where Bogyoke Aung San and others walked in our past. However, I do not mean that gaining the prominence is a complete work; it is just a stepping stone to achieve our goal..................by LAS

_ My greatest respect and heartfelt appreciation to our wonderful "Mother Teresa" of Burma, Dr. Cynthia Maung. Wishing her success, health and happiness...............by Feraya

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