A few Myanmar nurses have been running makeshift clinics to treat Covid sufferers and resistance fighters using medicine smuggled through military checkpoints to avoid the junta. Healthcare professionals are at the vanguard of a civil disobedience campaign against the February coup and a crackdown on dissent that has killed more than 1,300 people, according to a local monitoring organisation. With suitcases packed, they are constantly ready to go.
According to rights groups, the junta has detained and murdered dozens of protesting health professionals as a result of a boycott of government facilities. According to the UN's refugee agency, some 85,000 people have been displaced by the violence in Kayah, with many of them crammed into camps where infections are easily transmitted.
Soon after the coup, Aye Naing — not her actual name — quit her work as a nurse in a public hospital and began volunteering in Kayah state in Myanmar's east, where the military and anti-coup militants had battled several times. "We have to escape and hide in the forest when the violence starts," she told AFP at a clinic located in a school abandoned due to conflict near Demoso.
The junta claims that new infections are down to roughly 150 per day, and that the Omicron variant has yet to arrive in Myanmar, following a catastrophic Covid wave in June and July, when new daily cases peaked at 40,000. However, because the health-care system is in chaos, only minimal testing is being done.
According to the UN's refugee agency, some 85,000 people have been displaced by the violence in Kayah, with many of them crammed into camps where infections are easily transmitted. The majority of Aye Naing's patients are displaced families, as well as combatants from local People's Defense Force (PDF) militias fighting the junta.
"I was told that there were not many physicians and medical staff in this region, and that the residents were requesting them," she added. "So I made the choice to come, and I went out in search of medical supplies." Her team uses a tiny tear in a piece of plastic stretched over a bamboo frame to conduct swab testing in one community.
Those who test positive are prescribed paracetamol or vitamins, the only medicine on offer. Donated oxygen must be used sparingly: refilling canisters involves a trip to the closest large town, passing junta checkpoints along the way. After each shift, Aye Naing removes her plastic protective suit and disinfects it, along with her mask, ready for the next one.
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