Health IS a Human Right

Dr. Cynthia Maung

 Dr. Cynthia Maung fled Burma/Myanmar in 1989 when militants entered her town and burned her entire village.  With a small group of students, Dr. Cynthia opened a makeshift medical clinic in a rickety wooden house on the dusty outskirts of Mae Sot, Thailand.  All of the clinic’s medical instruments fit into the woven bag Dr. Cynthia had slung over her shoulder during their ten-night trek through the jungles of Burma’s eastern border region. With these limited tools and a commitment to care for all who fled conflict and poverty, the Mae Tao Clinic was born.

“We didn’t expect to be here 20 years,” Dr. Cynthia says. But unstable conditions prevented returning to their homeland, so the group continued to work at the humble clinic using limited resources, medicine, education and outreach to relieve human suffering and heal broken communities.

Prosthetic legs awaiting a land mine victim

Two decades later, the Mae Tao Clinic (MTC) has grown into a comprehensive community health center and a hub for regional health training with more than 1,000 graduates serving clinics, schools, villages, factories, camps and slums along both sides of the Thai-Burma border.

Prosthetic Design and Fitting Table

Mae Tao Clinic serves a target population of approximately 150,000 and shoulders an annual caseload of about 90,000 patients. The staff sees between 300-400 patients per day; runs a jungle field clinic; and feeds 2,000 school children, patients, staff and their families every day. About half of the clinic’s patients are from the local Burmese migrant community, with the rest traveling from inside Burma to seek health care.

Mae Tao Clinic treats everything from minor maladies to malaria, tuberculosis (TB), HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, pneumonia, acute diarrheal diseases, diabetes, epilepsy, thyroid disease, cancer and mental illness. The clinic’s medics are trained in surgery, reproductive health (including labor and delivery), eye health, dental health, prosthetics, pediatrics, lab services, and social work. 

Just last year alone, they had 280 prosthetic projects, with most of them needed due to land mine explosions and gunshot wounds that occurred on the other side of the border.  Each day, the clinic delivers on average 10 babies. 


MTC has set up safe houses for abused women and abandoned children; counseling and home-based treatment for HIV/AIDS patients; a mobile medic program to train and equip health workers in areas of Burma that have no medical care; an education and advocacy program — including 72 migrant school — to protect thousands of children (many without parents) from malnutrition, child trafficking and labor exploitation. The clinic also provides emergency food, shelter and medical care in the wake of environmental and political crises.

Prosthetics Project Board - which lists the reasons for each project

For me personally, the “coolest” (read: most unique, daring, dangerous and needed) aspect of the Clinic, were the Backpack Doctors.  The Backpack Doctors are a small team of about 2-3 doctors, who travel within Burma/Myanmar bringing medical services, vaccinations and assistance to those who are trapped within the borders and remote areas.  They are the most needed aid in that NGOs, governments, and aid workers cannot access this group of people.  There are 95 different backpack “territories” that each have their own backpacker team which aims to serve 2,000 internally displaced persons.  These teams are the only source of medical care for these populations.  These Backpack Doctors risk their lives each and every day to bring health care to these isolated communities, and in the few years that they have been operating, seven doctors have been killed due to landmines and gunshot wounds, with another two arrested by the government just last year.