In February 1989, five months after fleeing a brutal military crackdown in Burma/Myanmar, Dr. Cynthia Maung and a small group of her students opened a makeshift medical clinic in a rickety wooden house on the dusty outskirts of Mae Sot, Thailand. In the beginning, the clinic had virtually no supplies, no money, and (except for Dr. Cynthia) no staff formally trained in medicine. Other factors compounded their problems; they were in Thailand illegally, and didn’t speak the language. Almost 40 years later, the Mae Tao Clinic (MTC) has grown into a comprehensive community health centre and a hub for regional health training with more than 3,000 graduates serving clinics, schools, villages, factories, camps and peri-urban slums along both sides of the Thai-Burma border. In some remote areas inside Burma, the clinic’s former students have become the only sources of medical care. The clinic now shoulders an annual caseload of over 100,000 patients; treats 300 to 420 patients daily; over 2,000 babies are delivered; provides essential healthcare services to remote and isolated areas in eastern Burma through Health System Strengthening (HSS) project in collaboration with 8 ethnic health organisations; provides health trainings; and feeds over 2,000 school children, patients, staff and their families every day. Currently, just around half of the clinic’s patients are from the local Burmese migrant community, with the rest traveling from inside Burma to seek healthcare. The clinic’s health services have to cope with both acute and chronic medical problems. Staff members treat almost everything from minor maladies to non-/communicable diseases to chronic diseases. Unfortunately after a period of relative calm for Myanmar and for Dr Cynthia’s hospital, a coup d’etat began in Myanmar on 1st February 2001. As a result of this horrible conflict displaced people started flooding across the border once again and significantly increasing pressure on both the hospital and its training facilities. Remember these are both funded almost entirely by charitable donations. For the last three years, the Keele University Global Health MSc programme students have been privileged to visit Dr Cynthia’s hospital, to experience the amazing work undertaken there and to learn from an enormous range of staff and volunteers. These study tours have been led by Prof Ian Cumming, Prof Heidi Fuller and Dr Suhad Daher-Nashif from Keele University who are now trying to repay some of the friendliness and hospitality of Dr Cynthia and her team by raising essential funds for them. Our first of a few charitable escapades is the 3 Peaks of Yorkshire walk - climbing Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough in less than 12 hours on Saturday 16th August. The walk is 24 miles with 1600m of vertical ascent.
Fundraising page
The Yorkshire Peaks Challenge involves climbing Pen-y-ghent, Ingleborough and Whernside, often within 12 hours.