Don's experience at Mae Tao Clinic

The medics and nurses at Mae Tao Clinic do incredible work with very few resources. They are young folks from the refugee camps on the Thai side of the Burmese border who are trained by other Burmese medics and the occasional western doctor, nurse or NP. They eat, live, work and study medicine and English on the clinic campus and may visit their families in the nearby refugee camps perhaps twice a year because of restrictions on movement within Thailand. There are about 1000 people living on the clinic campus at any one time and there are 3 meals a day provided for every worker, inpatient and their families.

My role at the clinic was of a consultant and a resource as the medics definitely run the show and do a very good job of it considering their level of education, training, and lack of treatment resources. I saw patients in the outpatient clinics alongside the medics and gave some tips on history taking and reviewed physical exam techniques. I learned a lot about tropical medicine and Karen/Burmese concepts of health and illness from the medics and patients.

I have been enjoying hanging out with the expats in Mae Sot. Everyone is working, teaching, volunteering in good NGO programs. But the special part of being here is the interactions with the patients, medics and nurses at Mae Tao Clinic. It has been an enlightening experience to hear the stories of survival, strength, perserverance and hope from these people.

N.D.W is a young woman of 18 who I had the pleasure of working with at Mae Tao. At 10 years, the Burmese military burned several houses in her villiage and she left with her family through the mountains and jungle to cross into Thailand. The Burmese military demand payment of money or food from villagers, often taking male children from their families for use as porters or as human landmine detectors. The female children may be forced into prostitution in an attempt to keep houses or crops. NDW's family safely crossed the border in 1997 to live in the Maela refugee camp near Mae Sot along with more than 30,000 other refugees. She has lived in Maela for 6 years, then came to Mae Tao for the last 2 year to train, work and live in the clinic campus. She is not allowed to leave the campus for any reason and risks arrest or detention, or repatriation to Burma if she is found out of camp borders by police. She has 3 sisters living in Maela camp and making Burmese-style clothing for sale in Thai communities. Her brother left to Bangkok to seek work illegally but he has not been heard from for 3 years and is believed in detention or dead.

Despite these dire living and working circumstances, the medics I spoke with have hope that one day they will be able to return to a democratic and peaceful Burma.