Guest Post by Aye Moe Thu Ma, MD, breast cancer specialist at Mount Sinai Roosevelt and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s. Earlier this year, Dr. Ma led a 15-member team of doctors and other health care professionals on a week-long medical mission to Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma. Under repressive military rule from 1962 to 2011, the country is beginning to emerge from decades of isolation as it moves toward democratic reforms.
I recently returned from a great medical mission to my native country, Myanmar, the exotic land of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Mandalay” and George Orwell’s novel Burmese Days. Sealed off for more than half a century by the military dictatorship, this is a country where time seems to have slowed. It is also one of the poorest and most oppressed countries in the world, with less than 2% of its gross domestic product allocated to health care.
Under the current government, things are drastically shifting in this nation the size of Texas, with twice the population. Along with releasing the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, the country has relaxed its control on access to information and trade for its people. It is through this opening that our group was allowed to complete our medical mission and share our skills, knowledge and compassion with this historically underserved population.
It Takes a Team
Although individual practitioners have treated patients in Myanmar through voluntary hospitals, the St. Luke’s-Roosevelt mission is probably one of the first to include a comprehensive group of health care providers, and the very first to have breast specialists on board, including nationally renowned breast surgeon and author Alison Estabrook, MD. Our team also included general surgeons, a pathologist, anesthesiologist, pediatric cardiologist, nurses, nurse anesthetists and surgical residents.
Thanks to donations from several charitable organizations, we brought medications and supplies with us, along with our own instruments and equipment. Our destinations were a charity hospital in Sagaing and the Mandalay General Hospital, the largest teaching hospital in upper Myanmar. We witnessed everyday life along the commute through the plains of Mandalay, the sunflower fields and the banks of the Irrawaddy River, all among a backdrop of rice paddy fields with white pagodas and small villages peeking up from the horizon.
Treating Dire Cases
The first day was overwhelming, with 200 patients waiting for us in the clinic, many having traveled 3 to 6 hours, or even a whole day, to see us. We treated farmers, teachers and construction workers who had had their conditions — some extremely painful and/or life threatening — for years. It was heartening to see them thrilled when their symptoms were resolved. We also saw several patients without life-threatening pathology, but who wanted reassurance. In contrast, we counseled several cancer patients, one with metastatic lung cancer whose courage and grace were inspiring.
In the open-air charity hospital on the sandy banks of the Irrawaddy, we screened and treated more than 185 people, seeing patients in the clinic, providing various biopsies, operating on thyroid cases and performing breast and general surgeries. We sadly, but safely, avoided disfiguring conditions that we could not handle with our limited resources. Some of us put in long hours, operating until 10 or 11 at night. We also demonstrated medical technology to the local physicians and left several supplies for them.
Generosity Makes the Mission
I had a wonderful time sharing my country with my fellow team members, and we all found the experience fulfilling. While I have a personal connection to the country, most of the credit goes to the rest of my group (Drs. Deva Boone, Alison Estabrook, Bill Harrington, David Reed, Mark Shikowitz, David Spar, Leroy Sutherland, Raymond Wedderburn, Barbara Wexelman, Kevin Yang, and nurses Nevin Osman, Joanna Woersching, Cheryl Clements and Bethany Zaro) who, besides the residents, participated in this mission out of the kindness of their hearts and without compensation. They have taken time from their busy schedules by using their vacation time, time away from their babies, and expenses out of their pocket to help the people of Myanmar. I feel very fortunate to have worked alongside such a flexible, hardworking group of people who were not fazed to toil in substandard conditions.
It is my hope to make the mission to Myanmar an annual event. I firmly believe that the treatment and training we provided, and a continual relationship, will help many more people in the future. It is a small world, after all.
Read about this mission in the New York Daily News.