Burma junta forces health workers underground

With an empty plastic bag in her hand and a purse on her shoulder, she crosses into Burma every morning among the stream of Indian traders. To officials on both sides of the border, she’s just an ordinary businesswoman hurrying to shop in the popular Chinese markets in Namphalong, Burma.

But as soon as the 35-year-old tribal woman is beyond the sight of Burmese immigration officials, she neatly folds the vinyl bag and puts it in her handbag, before turning into one of the nearby villages to start her day’s work as a community health worker.

“Every day I meet intravenous heroin users, prostitutes and ordinary villagers to explain how they can prevent infectious diseases like HIV or hepatitis,” said the Burmese woman who lives in Moreh, a border town in the northeast Indian state of Manipur. Concerned about her safety, she did not want to be photographed or identified by name.

“I also advise people on how to get medical help in Burma or India in case they get the diseases.”

As a growing number of international charities suspend operations in Burma because of increasing pressure from Burma’s military junta, community health workers like this woman do their best to provide basic medical care to some of Asia’s most vulnerable people.

AIDS, malaria rife

In a country where HIV/AIDS and malaria are rife, the activities of any health worker are overwhelming. UNAIDS, the United Nations agency coordinating the global fight against the disease, estimates that about 620,000 people in Burma 15 to 49 years of age are infected with HIV. But on the border, where the junta casts its shadow over every section of society, health workers face the additional burden of risking their lives daily when they go to help the ill.

“Sometimes in the villages, I also distribute essential medicines supplied by NHEC,” the woman said, referring to the National Health and Education Committee, organized by Burmese pro-democracy activists in exile. “Although I’m doing exactly what a community health worker does elsewhere in the world, I often have to work undercover to save myself from being troubled by the military.”

To maintain her false identity as a trader in the eyes of the Burmese border police, she carries cheap clothes or consumer goods from markets in Tamu, south of Namphalong, every evening for some shops in Moreh.

Junta cracks down

Lamlhing Touthang, a Namphalong-based health worker, recently returned home after participating in a monthlong HIV-care training camp in Manipur. On her return, she was interrogated for more than five hours by Burmese military intelligence officials, who suspected her of having a role in “anti-national” activities, suggesting that she doubled as a political agent for the pro-democracy activists in exile.

“From my bag [Burmese intelligence officers] got nothing except some NHEC pamphlets on awareness about AIDS and malaria,” she said.

“Yet they ordered me not to go out of the country again for ‘so long’ in the future. They also told me not to maintain any communications with the NHEC.”

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