A clinic, a camp and a cave

We’ve had the opportunity to visit a few interesting places recently. We wanted to post about three quite diverse excursions – to a medical clinic, a refugee camp and a cave!

The Mae Tao Clinic is an award winning medical clinic based in Mae Sot, Thailand. The clinic treats patients from Burma who often spend days making the trip to seek treatment. It looks pretty different from a medical clinic you’d find back home. The buildings and resources are basic and the poverty of the patients was immediately apparent. As we arrived, we saw a man hitch an improvised trailer to a scooter to transport his six injured family members home. It costs just 30 baht (equivalent to NZ$1) to register as a patient at the clinic, and there are no other fees. Some people are not able to afford even this small charge, but no patient is refused if cost is an issue.

The clinic does a fantastic job at providing a huge range of services. The clinic’s departments include dentistry, inpatient and outpatient medical, an eye centre, obstetrics, surgical, HIV treatment and TB treatment. A big focus is on maternity and obstetric care, and particularly on educating women about their family’s health. There are a few visiting doctors from overseas, but most of the staff are locally trained medics. With just a couple of years training, it’s amazing what the medics are able to do at the clinic. They even perform some surgical procedures – hernia repair, vasectomies, draining abscesses and amputating limbs. While this would be unthinkable back home, there are simply not enough doctors available for the Burmese people.

We got to see inside the surgical ward and operating theatre. People with bandages and braces lay on hard wooden beds, some with family members helping fan them to keep them cool. Off to the side is a small operating theatre. A surgeon from the USA was visiting, so the clinic was taking the opportunity to do some more complicated surgeries.

The clinic also has a prosthetics department. Most land mine and gunshot victims have to go to a bigger Thai hospital nearby for surgery. Later, they stay at the Mae Tao Clinic for a week. While they are there, they help to make their own prosthetics so they learn the skills needed to repair them. When you read all the headlines about how great the reforms are in Burma, remember that the Mae Tao Clinic still makes prosthetics for 250 landmine victims a year. We have seen several people with missing legs during our time on the border.

The staff and volunteers are the first to say that having to treat patients in Thailand is not an ideal situation. As well as the huge travel burden it imposes, Thai authorities only grant a one day visa to patients. If patients need to stay longer (which many do) then they risk a fine from the police when they try to leave. These barriers also dissuade patients from returning to the clinic for important follow-up consultations or prescription repeats.

Hopefully people within Burma will soon be able to access healthcare within their own country. However, with the annual health budget currently set at less than NZ$2.50 per person, a lot will have to change before the situation improves. In the meantime, the Mae Tao Clinic is fulfilling an important need. If you want to find out more, or give a donation, you can find the clinic’s website at: www.maetaoclinic.org.

Recently, we also visited a nearby refugee camp. Many of the students at our school have come from Mae La – the largest refugee camp on the border, with around 70,000 people. We went there to visit a hostel which provides accommodation for 30 students. Many of the students from the hostel will eventually come to the college we’re volunteering at. While we were there we taught the students a song, played a few games and showed a video of the haka!

We are often struck by two almost opposite thoughts. On the one hand, our experience has shown us that poverty is not the stereotype we are used to seeing in charity ads. People are not constantly miserable; they just get on with their lives with what they have. On the other hand, we are often reminded of just how hard their lives can be. We were talking to a student and noticed a deep scar on his leg. When we asked him about it, he told us that he once got a life-threatening skin infection whilst in Karen State. With no healthcare available in his village, he used a knife to try to drain the huge abscess that had formed. When this failed, 20 villagers carried him through the jungle on an improvised stretcher to the nearest clinic – a day’s walk away.

We experienced these kinds of contrasting thoughts during our visit to the camp. In some ways the camp felt much like a normal village (albeit more densely built). There are many schools, churches, monasteries and stores. We heard that many people even come to the camp by choice, as it is an opportunity for their children to access education that would otherwise be unavailable or unaffordable in Burma. People walk and bike along the dirt paths between the bamboo houses. It actually felt quite relaxed, certainly not what we’d have previously imagined a refugee camp to be like.

But then we also heard of all the problems below the surface. Confining tens of thousands of people to a small space, forbidding them to work and keeping them like this for decades is a recipe for causing violence and social issues as well as eroding feelings of self-determination. The rainy season also turns everything to mud and spreads disease.

Next year will be the 30^th anniversary of the “Mae La Temporary Shelter”. If peace, education and health come to Karen State soon, Mae La might someday live up to the “temporary” in its name.

On a lighter note, there’s a huge cave nearby that we were keen to visit. So the day before leaving the college we asked the students if they wanted to go and explore it. We got an enthusiastic response – the sleepy mood on the hot morning became a flurry of activity as the students gathered their things and got into the ute.

The cave was massive, and it was great fun to explore with the students. Here are a few of our photos:

It’s come to the end of our time at the college – next, we’ll be spending a few days in Bangkok to get a visa for our trip to Burma. Our next post will be about the recent graduation celebrations and saying farewell to the students, and to our home for the last few months.

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson