Thai clinic offers lifeline to Burmese children

Kanchana with Nay Lin and his Mum

We take our medical care for granted in the developed world. If a child is sick we rush them to the GP or hospital and they are treated immediately. The situation is very different in Myanmar (Burma). More than 20 years of rule under a military junta and internal conflicts have left the country with such a shortage of doctors, nurses, medicines and equipment that people have to travel great distances to get the most basic treatment and children are dying of quite treatable conditions. Maternal and and infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world.

In 2000, a Thai-born Australian nurse, Kanchana Thornton and her husband Phil, an author and journalist,spent a holiday in Thailand and visited the town of Mae Sot on the Thai Burma border where they discovered the Mae Tao clinic, a small village of houses offering healthcare services to Thai and Burmese adults and children.

They were so touched by what they saw, they decided to leave their comfortable beachside life in Sydney for Kanchana to undertake a year’s placement at the clinic. Thirteen years later, they are still there. Speaking on a visit to London recently, Kanchana said: “I was working in the children’s outpatient clinic and came across so many cases where children from Burma could not get the help they needed because of the complexities of their conditions. The Mae Tao clinic was a fantastic resource for the area but could not act as a fully functioning hospital. It was then I decided to look into the possibility of transferring children to Chiang Mai Hospital, a much larger and better equipped hospital four hours drive north of Mae Sot.”

After much negotiation with the hospital and Thai authorities, Kanchana was able to help six patients in 2006 by hiring an ambulance to drive the children to Chiang Mai and raising the funds not only for their medical expenses but also for food and accommodation costs for their family.

In that year Kanchana founded the Burma Children Medical Fund (BCMF), to provide the costs of medical treatment for some of the most vulnerable children crossing the Thai Burma border to seek help. Since then, BCMF has helped more than 1,300 patients receive treatment at Chiang Mai hospital, with illnesses ranging from cardiac disease to benign tumours. Children are assessed at the Mae Tao clinic before it is decided whether BCMF has the available resources to help with their treatment.

Kachana remembers every child she has seen at the clinic. They don't all survive, but at Mae Sot they are given the best chance possible. Yel Kyaw is a 12 year old boy from Mon State, Burma who arrived suffering from a severe heart condition.  When his symptoms first appeared his mother had taken him to a free local army clinic and he was referred to Rangoon.  The Xray confirmed his condition but doctors said it would cost $5,000US for the lifesaving operation. Despite medication to alleviate the condition, he became too tired to continue at school. In March last year, Yel Kyaw and his mother made the arduous to Mae Sot and he had the surgery he needed.  Today Kel Hyaw is a normal boy keen to play sports again and catching up with two years of missed school.  Without BCMF’s help to get him to hospital in Thailand this would not have been possible.

Despite impressive statistics on how many children have been helped so far, Kanchana knows that there is much more work to be done. "The demand always outweighs supply and we expect that this demand will only increase with the opening of the ASEAN borders in 2015, making it easier for families from Burma to travel into Thailand. We always want to help every child that comes to us but it is increasingly difficult.”

The Burma Children Medical Fund is supported by Thai Children’s Trust, under the patronage of Cardinal Vincent Nichols.

To make a donation visit: www.ThaiChildrensTrust.org.uk

For more information about Burma Children’s Medical Fund visit: www.BurmaChildren.com