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Breathless in Myanmar

When Myanmar’s military overthrew the civilian government on 1 February, public health officials warned there would soon be a coronavirus crisis. Since then, the emergence of the highly contagious delta variant of the virus has led to an unfolding catastrophe on a scale few could have foreseen.

India, Brazil and now Indonesia have suffered in recent months from rapid and relentless growth in Covid-19 cases, deaths and horrific secondary infections. But those countries still have functioning health systems and governing bodies, dysfunctional though some may be. Doctors are permitted to do their jobs, non-governmental organisations are allowed to operate, foreign aid can be delivered and disseminated.

Myanmar has none of that.

In the past two weeks, the daily average of cases has more than doubled to 5,330 while deaths have gone up eight-fold to 166. Those figures likely represent just a tiny portion of the whole: Myanmar barely has a testing regime in place, meaning reliable data is impossible to come by. The stories making their way out of the country paint a fuller picture.

‘There is hardly any time or space to mourn the dead as the bodies pile up at Yangon’s Yay Way crematorium. Amid the throng of mourners, there is only room for one or two people to stand near the incinerator while their loved ones are cremated,’ Myanmar Now reported last week.

Desperate relatives of the ill wait in blocks-long queues for oxygen and social media is filled with pleas for help. The virus is ripping through Insein Prison, raising concerns for the imprisoned civilian leadership. Several political prisoners, including NLD leader ​​Nyan Win, have already fallen ill with the virus.

‘One estimate provided by public health experts in Myanmar predicts that 50% of Myanmar’s 55 million people will be infected within three weeks by either the Alpha or Delta variant of Covid-19,’ Mary P. Callahan wrote in Asia Times.

Callahan’s stark account of trying to help a friend in Myanmar secure oxygen for her dying mother is a single person’s story writ large. There is no oxygen, in part, because the junta has taken it for the army hospitals. Those seeking help face danger—accused of breaking curfew or restrictions on gatherings, they may be arrested or even shot at.

It is hard to imagine any intervention could stop these horrors. Neighbouring China could flood Myanmar with vaccines, but no one trusts the government enough to take medical care from them. The UN has urged an independent body be created to coordinate aid and distribution. Would the junta permit such an entity?

For a hint of an answer, perhaps we might look to Cyclone Nargis in 2008, when the military initially blocked lifesaving foreign aid from reaching millions of victims. Weeks in, the generals relented to a coordinated global push. ‘To save lives, the world forced its way into Burma, albeit in an imperfect and constrained manner. But many Burmese are alive and better able to rebuild their lives than they would have been if the effort had not been made,’ Human Rights Watch wrote a year later.

Today, so very many more lives are on the line. But is there any sign the world is ready to force its way in?

 

From the archives

Useless

Preeta Samarasan

I was born eighty years ago, halfway across the world, in a small town in what was then Malaya. Three hot meals a day, a real mattress to sleep on—I didn’t dare to hope for more. Oh, I was not immune to pointless and unrealistic yearning, but I knew my station in life.

My sister, Parimala, was the apple of everybody’s eye. The long-awaited princess. When we could afford a chicken, the upper thighs were saved for Pari. When Amma made kolukattai, Pari got the first one, hot-hot out of the steamer. When Amma scraped out the cheenachatti with hot rice—oh, that oily rice, flecked with crusted bits of curry!—the first mouthful would go straight from Amma’s hand into Pari’s mouth. If we boys felt hard done by, we never discussed it with each other. Anyhow, we weren’t all in the same boat. Even if my parents frequently said what a blessing it was finally to have a daughter in the house, Anandan was still the firstborn son. So he got his share of special treatment: a gold chain and ring that had been made for him at birth, and which he was allowed to wear for exams and other special occasions; pocket money; a bicycle; fortifying tonics before hockey matches. My second brother, Selvaraj, did not have that status, but he was blessed with the kind of disposition that notices only good things. Forever placid and good-tempered, he would have been no sort of ally for a brooding boy like me.

Read more here

 

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