First, the junta stole
Myanmar’s elected leaders from the
people. Now, doctors say, the generals have taken the oxygen that some citizens
need to breathe.
اضافة اعلان
As the delta variant of the coronavirus rampages through
Myanmar, the military, which seized power in a February coup, has ordered that
lifesaving oxygen be denied to private clinics, according to medical workers.
The clinics are staffed largely by doctors who oppose the army’s takeover and
refuse to work in state hospitals. Basic medical care for COVID patients has
been turned into an illegal act, said Dr Min Han, a doctor at a private clinic.
The military has also prevented people from buying supplies from
oxygen producers, whom it accuses of price-gouging, forcing desperate family
members to defy the army in order to save sick relatives. And it has stopped
charities from giving oxygen to people who need it, witnesses and charity
workers said.
This week, soldiers in the city of Yangon went so far as to fire
into a crowd of people lined up to buy oxygen tanks, witnesses said.
Doctors accuse the military of trying to ensure that the scarce
supply of oxygen is funneled to military hospitals, which cater to army
families.
Denying oxygen to private clinics and citizens has prematurely
ended hundreds of lives, medical workers say, adding a cruel political
dimension to an escalating health crisis. Thousands more are at imminent risk
of dying, they say. And with the junta having apparently reserved much of the
vaccine supply for its loyal ranks, there is little hope that Myanmar’s COVID
outbreak, by far its worst yet, will end anytime soon.
“An explosion of COVID cases, including the delta variant, the
collapse of Myanmar’s health care system, and the deep mistrust of the people
of Myanmar of anything connected to the military junta are a perfect storm of
factors that could cause a significant loss of life in Myanmar without
emergency assistance by the international community,” Tom Andrews, the United
Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said Wednesday.
Public anger toward the army — which has already shot dead
hundreds of people protesting the coup, as well as children and other
bystanders — has only hardened.
“I wonder if the military is trying to survive by making it so
there are no people left in the country,” said Ko Thein Zaw, a resident of
Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar.
Thein Zaw and his wife were married just before the putsch but
canceled their honeymoon because of the turmoil. When his wife tested positive
for COVID-19 this month, Thein Zaw scrambled to secure oxygen tanks for her. He
could not find enough. On July 12, she died, gasping for breath.
“My wife died because of the coup and because the military is
trying to destroy everything good for the people,” said Thein Zaw, who is now
sick with COVID himself. “Myanmar is a nation in which there are many ways to
die.”
On Wednesday, 7,083 people tested positive for COVID and 145
died, according to the Ministry of Health and Sports. Medical experts say such
official numbers are a fraction of the real caseload, given the shortage of
testing and record-keeping.
In an alarming sign of how widespread Myanmar’s COVID outbreak
has become, more than 34 percent of those tested had the disease. By contrast,
the seven-day average positivity rate in the United States from late June to
early July was 2.7 percent.
Less than one-third of the people in Myanmar who need oxygen can
secure adequate supplies, said Ko Aung Aung Oo, president of a medical charity
in Mandalay.
Yet even as the virus rages, the military-led government has
tried to present itself as the people’s benefactor. State media quoted Senior
Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the junta chief, as batting away suggestions that oxygen
supplies were being restricted by the army.
“Actually, we have enough oxygen,” the general said, according
to the government-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper Tuesday. “The
people do not need to worry about it so much and should not spread the rumor.”
Instead, the junta has accused sellers of oxygen cylinders of
price-gouging. That was the reason it gave when it recently announced that
people would no longer be allowed to buy from them directly.
The army has also heaped scorn on doctors and other medical
workers who have refused to work at government hospitals as part of a much
broader mass civil disobedience movement meant to make it impossible for the
junta to govern.
But many state-employed doctors taking part in the labor
stoppage, which has united more than 1 million government workers, are caring
for patients privately.
“We find a way to help people,” said Dr Hsu Mon, who is
practicing at an underground clinic. “The military doesn’t care about how to
help or how to work for people. They only work for their family members.”
This week, doctors at private clinics received directives from
the junta forbidding them from receiving oxygen supplies, said Min Han, the
private clinic physician.
Meanwhile, soldiers have been actively disrupting oxygen supply
lines. On Monday in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, security forces sprayed
gunfire at a line of people waiting to buy oxygen. It was not immediately clear
whether there were casualties. Asked about the incident, a Yangon health
official said the people had to be dispersed because they were disobeying
lockdown orders.
In the southeastern city of Mawlamyine, Ko Naing Win, a charity
worker, said soldiers had arrived this week demanding to know how he had
imported oxygen from neighboring Thailand. They told him to stop or face jail,
Naing Win said.
He has stopped donating oxygen to the public. “People in need of
oxygen keep coming to me in tears,” he said. “But I’m afraid that I will get
arrested.”
COVID is also ripping through Myanmar’s prisons, which are
crowded with thousands of people whose sole crime was opposing the coup, human
rights groups said. Among those said to be critically ill are senior members of
the National League for Democracy, the governing party that was ousted by the
coup.
Read more
Region & World
.jpg)
.jpg)
