Rohingyas dying from Lack of Heath Care in Myanmar

The Chaung, Myanmar  – Noor Jahan rocked slowly on the floor, trying to steady her weak body. Her chest heaved and her eyes closed with each raspy breath. She could no longer eat or speak, throwing up even spoonfuls of tea. 

Two years ago, she would have left her upscale home — one of the nicest in the community — and gone to a hospital to get tests and medicine for her failing liver and kidneys. But that was before Buddhist mobs torched and pillaged her neighborhood, forcing thousands of ethnic Rohingya like herself to flee to a hot, desert-like patch of land on the outskirts of town. She was then stuck in a dirt-floor bamboo hut about a quarter-mile from the sea. She and others from the Muslim minority group have been forced to live segregated behind security checkpoints and cannot leave, except for medical emergencies. Often not even then .

Living conditions in The’ Chaung village and surrounding camps of Myanmar’s northwestern state of Rakhine are desperate for the healthiest residents. For those who are sick, they are unbearable. The situation became even worse two weeks ago, when the aid group Doctors Without Borders was forced to stop working in Rakhine, where most Rohingya live. The government considers all 1.3 million Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh, though many of them were born in Myanmar to families who have lived here for generations. Presidential spokesman Ye Htut accused Doctors Without Borders of unfairly providing more care to Muslims than Buddhists and inflaming communal tensions by hiring “Bengalis,” the name the government uses to refer to the Rohingya .

Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist nation of 60 million, emerged from a half-century of isolating military rule in 2011. Nascent democratic reforms have generated optimism in the international community — the World Bank recently pledged $2 billion in development aid — but waves of ethnic violence, mainly against the Rohingya, have raised concerns from the US and others. Before Doctors Without Borders was shut down, Rakhine Buddhists regularly protested the group in what Vickie Hawkins, its deputy head of mission in Myanmar, described as a slow strangulation. Staff members were intimidated. Landlords became too fearful to rent houses for their operation. Boat captains declined to ferry patients .

The situation intensified after the organization said it treated 22 Rohingya patients who were wounded and traumatized following an attack in January. The government has staunchly denied that a Buddhist mob rampaged through a village, killing women and children, but the United Nations concluded more than 40 people may have been killed. Talks are still ongoing between the government and Doctors Without Borders over whether the group will be allowed to continue working in Rakhine state. Dr. Soe Lwin Nyein, the Health Ministry’s deputy director general, said Wednesday that the government was continuing to accept HIV and tuberculosis drugs from the group for patients in Rakhine .

In 2011, before the violence erupted, the European Community Humanitarian Office reported that acute malnutrition rates in parts of northern Rakhine reached 23 percent, far above the 15 percent emergency level set by the World Health Organization. In one township, the number of deaths among children under 5 is nearly triple the national rate, according to the UN. Now the situation is even more dire, with families split and lives disrupted.