ASEAN urged to address Myanmar crises, as special envoy named

Aljazeera
4 Aug 2021

Rights groups call on regional political bloc to work with shadow NUG, local health organisations to deliver urgent humanitarian aid.

Volunteers in protective suits carry a COVID patient lying on a bed as they try to relocate oxygen-dependent patients from the COVID centre during floods in Karen state [Karen Information Center/Handout via Reuters]

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) urgently needs to address Myanmar’s “dire” human rights and humanitarian crises, which are being compounded by a COVID-19 health emergency and recent flooding, rights groups have said, warning the regional bloc to avoid giving legitimacy to the country’s military.

In Myanmar, Health Care’s Collapse Takes Its Own Toll

The New York Times

Richard C. Paddock
June 12, 2021

Two days after Myanmar’s military seized power in February, doctors at North Okkalapa General Hospital in Yangon wore red ribbons to signal their opposition to the coup.Credit...The New York Times

Since the February coup, many physicians have refused to work at state-run hospitals. “I will never blame the doctors,” said a patient whose treatment stopped.

U Hla Min, a rice farmer in central Myanmar, was getting regular radiation therapy for cancer when the military seized power on Feb. 1. Initially expected to survive, he lasted less than three months.

His treatment ended when doctors at Mandalay General Hospital walked off the job to protest the coup. Soldiers soon occupied the hospital and others across Myanmar, using them as bases for their bloody crackdown on resistance to their rule. Many medical workers and would-be patients, fearing arrest or worse, stayed away.

Poor healthcare, prospects for Rohingya babies in Bangladesh

Aljazeera

by Stefanie Dekker

28 August 2019

Few Rohingya babies are taken to Bangladeshi camp clinics and lack birth certificates when born.

 

Health workers in the world’s largest refugee camp say they’re struggling to provide proper care for babies born to Rohingya women in Bangladesh.

More than 100 babies are born every day in Rohingya refugee camps in southeast Bangladesh.

Myanmar -- investors should be cautious but take the risk.

         NIKKEI

ASIAN REVIEW

MARCH 27, 2019

If government pursues humanitarian agenda, foreign partners can back projects, even in Rakhine State.

Simon Tay

Aung San Suu Kyi told investors that "much of Rakhine's economic potential still remains untapped." © Reuters

A humanitarian crisis that has been brewing at the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh since 2016 is reaching a critical point. At Cox's Bazar, just inside Bangladesh, an estimated 740,000 displaced Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar's Rakhine State are encamped in temporary shelters, hoping that the international community will take them in as refugees or facilitate their safe return to the homes they claim in Myanmar.

How AI is helping Rohingya refugee health

Monday, 25 February, 2019

Refugee camps are fertile ground for contagious diseases, including skin manifestations.

So for the more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees who’ve fled Myanmar in the past year, finding temporary shelter across the border in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, their overcrowded, unhygienic living conditions have made them vulnerable to infections and other diseases — a problem the United Nations has called “immense”, with healthcare services “grossly under-funded.”