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Thailand

An IRC health volunteer translates for a Burmese family at a meeting in Bangkok
A boy makes his way home on a makeshift raft.
An IRC advocacy coordinator distributes water purification tablets in Bangkok
Kaew Nimit and her family wade through flood waters in Bangkok

In the flood's wake

Thailand
11.28.2011

While Thailand’s worst flooding in half a century recedes from most of the capital, nearly a half million Burmese residents of Bangkok are still being seriously affected by the devastation left in the flood’s wake. The IRC is aiding both Burmese and Thai residents in two of the city's hardest-hit neighborhoods. 

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A young refugee woman stands in front of an American flag
The IRC supports Burmese refugees on Thai border with services, resettlement
The IRC and UNHCR support other refugees who move to cities like Kuala Lumpur
IRC, UNHCR help refugees register and apply to resettle; most won't be able to
Resettlement Support Centers help refugees prepare paperwork and for their move
The IRC gives practical advice to refugees heading to the United States
The IRC tells refugees what to pack, how they will arrive in the United States
A Burmese family waited for two years to resettle, they will move to Indiana
The IRC helps the family receive medical care before they leave for the U.S.
The refugees wait at UNHCR in Kuala Lumpur for a bus to the airport
The Burmese refugee family sleeps during the long trip to the United States
They board a plane to the United States; the IRC will greet the refugees

Bound for America

Resettlement, Thailand
10.26.2011

Every year, the United States resettles tens of thousands of the world’s most vulnerable refugees. The preparations for resettlement are made by a Resettlement Support Center in the refugee’s country of asylum. In Bangkok, Thailand, the International Rescue Committee runs the Resettlement Support Center for East Asia, assisting refugees living in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Vietnam and other countries in the region. 

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A man walks flooded streets in Bangkok, Thailand; IRC protects Burmese refugees
Women use makeshift boat in flooded Bangkok, Thailand; IRC provides clean water
A man on flooded street in Bangkok, Thailand; IRC works with Thai government
Burmese refugees take shelter in a flooded building in Thailand
IRC staff directs Burmese refugees to food, clean water in flooded Bangkok
Bangkok, Thailand flooded, the IRC protects vulnerable refugees, migrant workers

Thailand floods

Thailand
10.25.2011

As flood waters rise in Thailand, Burmese refugees and migrant workers are especially vulnerable. The IRC is working with the Thai government to ensure this marginalized community has access to shelter, clean water, food and other basic services.

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<p>Poe Law, 58, who suffers from a muscular disease, exercises in the IRC&rsquo;s center for disabled refugees in the Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camp. <span><em>Photo: Peter Biro/IRC</em></span></p>
<p>Juh Meh, a staff member at the center, helps a refugee, Nya Reh, with his exercises. <span><em>Photo: Peter Biro/IRC</em></span></p>
<p>Kwae Reh makes a plaster cast for a prosthetic leg in the center&rsquo;s workshop. <span><em>Photo: Peter Biro/IRC</em></span></p>
<p>When a polypropylene leg is finished it is fitted with a rubber or wooden foot. <span><em>Photo: Peter Biro/IRC</em></span></p>
<p>Maung Maung lost a leg to a landmine in 1990. He now crafts prosthetic limbs in the IRC workshop at Ban Mai Nai Soi. <span><em>Photo: Peter Biro/IRC</em></span></p>
<p>Maung Maung helps as Hae Pweh Mu, 18, is fitted for a prosthetic arm. <span><em>Photo: Peter Biro/IRC</em></span></p>
<p>Kwae Reh (left) and Suh Reh make a cast for Hae Pweh Mu&rsquo;s prosthetic arm. <span><em>Photo: Peter Biro/IRC</em></span></p>
<p>Suh Reh lost his left leg to a landmine in 2005. &ldquo;At first I could only walk for ten minutes on my artificial leg before I became exhausted,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t keep my balance and I fell all the time.&rdquo; <span><em>Photo: Peter Biro/IRC</em></span></p>
<p>Suh Reh (left) and Juh Meh make a home visit to Taw Reh, a disabled refugee. Taw Reh, who was left partially paralyzed after a stroke, exercises at a purpose-built beam. <span><em>Photo: Peter Biro/IRC</em></span></p>
<p>Nye Ree Oo, 11, was born with cerebral palsy. He is one of many patients who regularly receive physiotherapy by the IRC staff. <span><em>Photo: Peter Biro/IRC</em></span></p>

Rehabilitation for disabled refugees

Thailand
05.25.2011

In a sprawling refugee camp in Thailand, an IRC rehabilitation center and prosthetics workshop serves disabled refugees from Myanmar. It is equipped with weights, exercise bikes and other rehabilitation equipment, and artificial limbs are constructed in an adjacent workshop.
 

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A fresh outbreak of fighting in eastern Myanmar has forced more than a thousand refugees to flee across the border into Thailand. More than 20,000 refugees have fled to Thailand since the fighting first erupted three weeks ago.
Many of the refugees are from the village of Phaluu, about 40 kilometers south of the Thailand-Myanmar border. Some of the refugees are sheltering in a Buddhist temple and at a school in Thailand's Tak Province.
The IRC is providing the refugees with health services and distributing clean water and emergency supplies. Here, the IRC's Dr. Nyunt Naing examines a patient.
Many of the refugees are suffering from injuries and medical problems. IRC doctors are travelling with a mobile health team from the Mae Tao clinic to treat the sick and ailing. An IRC medical team is also assessing the refugees overall medical needs and sharing the information with Thai health authorities.
Most of the refugees are members of the Karen ethnic minority group in Myanmar. Minority groups living in border regions of Myanmar have been fighting the central government since 1948 in one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies.
People arrive at the temple compound dehydrated and exhausted. Some also sustained injuries as they were fleeing their homes.
<P>A refugee woman decorates her daughter's face with <I>thanaka</I>, a pale yellow paste derived from tree bark.</P>
<P><I>Thanaka</I> can double as makeup or sunscreen.</P>
Thai soldiers guarding refugees at the Wat Maha Wong pagoda near in northwestern Thailand. Some 700 refugees have sought shelter at the pagoda.
The recent influx of more than 20,000 refugees from Myanmar into Thailand is the greatest in 21 years. Violence broke out inside Myanmar the day after its November 7 general election.

Crisis on the border

Thailand
12.03.2010

A fresh outbreak of fighting in eastern Myanmar has forced more than a thousand refugees to flee across the border into Thailand. The IRC is providing the refugees with health services and distributing clean water and emergency supplies.

Text and photos by the IRC's Peter Biro
Peter's blog >

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<p>Nearly 8,000 people live in the Tham Hin refugee camp, including 3,000 children. Around 300 children are born in the camp every year. IRC-trained midwives provide pre and postnatal care, family planning, immunizations and supplementary feeding for malnourished children.</p>
<p>A pregnant woman waits to see a midwife for a check-up. Once a month, all pregnant mothers gather in the camp&rsquo;s thatched maternity ward to be weighed, examined and receive supplemental food.</p>
<p>Tanaw, 27, who uses only one name, is one of 15 midwives in the Tham Hin camp. &ldquo;Part of my job is to make sure that pregnant women know how to take care of their children, before and after birth,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;I talk to them about the nutrients they need and how to avoid infections.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Children in Tham Hin are regularly weighed and measured to determine if they are malnourished or suffer from disease.</p>
<p>Tanaw calculates a patient&rsquo;s estimated delivery date using a cardboard gestation calculator, also known as a pregnancy wheel.</p>
<p>Tanaw gently feels a patient&rsquo;s belly and checks her blood pressure. She listens for the baby&rsquo;s heart beat with a stethoscope and measures the width of the stomach. &ldquo;If we detect a serious problem either with mother or baby, we can immediately refer the patient to a hospital outside the camp,&rdquo; Tanaw says.</p>
<p>Naw Mu, 23, is helped into an IRC ambulance for a four-hour drive to a hospital. The IRC&rsquo;s Dr. Parueluk Kesorn suspects a premature separation of the placenta from the uterine wall. &ldquo;She must receive treatment immediately,&rdquo; Kesorn says.</p>
<p>A father helps his daughter, suffering from bronchitis, breathe oxygen through a mask in the Tham Hin maternity ward. Respiratory tract infections are the most common ailment among children in the camp.</p>
<p>A midwife uses a special stethoscope that enables her to hear the fetal heart beat. All midwives attend a six-month training course where they learn delivery techniques, postnatal care, immunization, nutrition, first aid skills and hygiene.</p>
<p>A midwife administers a prenatal check-up to an expectant mother.</p>
<p>Lay Htoo, 20, is looking at her newborn daughter Di Lay, born a few hours earlier in the camp&rsquo;s maternity ward. The first-time mother is being treated for tuberculosis and is very weak. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m tired but very happy,&rdquo; she smiles.</p>
<p>Malnourished mothers and children receive extra food and iron tablets. Anemia and malnutrition are problems in the camp, especially among refugees who recently arrived from Myanmar.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I know I am doing something very important,&rdquo; says Tanaw, who herself is a Burmese refugee. &ldquo;My dream is to return to Myanmar and help mothers in the villages there too.&rdquo;</p>

The lifesaving midwives of Tham Hin

Thailand
11.18.2010

Nestled deep in the hills of Western Thailand, the Tham Hin refugee camp is a patchwork of bamboo huts housing nearly 8,000 people. Most of the camp’s residents are refugees from Myanmar who have fled war and upheaval in their homeland and have lived in the camp for years, or in some cases, decades. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is the camp’s sole provider of health care, including the vital service of training and providing midwives. Each year, 15 IRC-trained midwives examine and support hundreds of women and children in the camp. The examinations can detect potentially life-threatening conditions such as infections, severe anemia or an abnormal position of the fetus, in time for treatment and referral to hospitals outside the camp.Photos and text by Peter Biro/The IRC
 

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The IRC’s Suphachai Pitanee checks the pupil reflexes of a Burmese migrant during an eye examination near Mae Sot near the Myanmar border. (Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC)
The IRC’s Tupo Ruengrobpoo performs an eye examination on a Burmese child. During 2010, the IRC has performed eye examinations on thousands of children at 55 schools on the Thailand-Myanmar border. (Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC)
The IRC’s Suphachai Pitanee performs an eye exam. In September, 2010 the IRC border eye program in Thailand reached a milestone when it distributed its 100,000th pair of eyeglasses. (Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC)
Ma Ka, a 47-year-old bamboo picker from Myanmar, suddenly lost her eye sight while working in the fields. Her sister brought her to the Mae Tao clinic in Thailand for treatment. Here, IRC program manager Satja Netek (right) checks the pressure in Ma Ka’s eyes for signs of glaucoma, a disease that can damage the optic nerve and result in blindness. (Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC)
U Tin Shwe, 45, worked as a teacher in Myanmar before fleeing to Thailand. He is now teaching Burmese migrant children in Mae Sot, but found his work increasingly difficult as his eye sight deteriorated. “My new glasses will enable me to work again,” he says. (Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC)
A Burmese woman wears a metal spectacle frame designed to test out different eyeglass lenses. (Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC)
In rural Myanmar, people cannot afford to treat eye diseases or buy glasses. As a result, many become blind from preventable eye diseases or spend their lives suffering from poor eyesight. (Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC)
The IRC’s Win Win Maw checks the eyes of Phyu Phyu Lwin, 9, who is about to receive her first pair of glasses. “I couldn’t see the teacher or the blackboard at school,” she says. (Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC)
The success of the border eye program in Thailand has led the IRC to start similar programs for refugees in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Chad. The newest eye program is slated to open soon in Southern Sudan. Here, a young Sudanese refugee is examined by a health worker in Kenya’s Kakuma camp. (Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC)

Restoring sight

Thailand
10.13.2010

The International Rescue Committee is helping hundreds of thousands of visually impaired refugees and victims of war restore their vision through a unique program that offers free glasses and eye surgery.

Photos and text by the IRC's Peter Biro
 

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The Mae Tao clinic, on the outskirts of the town of Mae Sot in northeastern Thailand, is the only source of medical care for thousands of Burmese along the volatile Thailand-Myanmar border. Supported by the International Rescue Committee through its SHIELD program, the clinic treats around 150,000 patients, half of them from within Myanmar, every year. Patients, unable to afford health care elsewhere, are offered a wide range of free services, including an emergency room, 200 hospital beds, surgical, maternity, and eye-care wards, a laboratory and a blood bank. At the clinic’s prosthetics workshop, technicians make and fit artificial limbs, mostly for patients who have stepped on one of the many landmines that litter the border area.
<p>Nyine Tun arrived in the clinic shaking with fever from malaria. She had contracted the often fatal disease two weeks before arriving at Mae Tao from a village deep in eastern Myanmar&rsquo;s interior. &ldquo;I had a very high fever for many days,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I went to the clinic at home, but they wouldn&rsquo;t accept me because I couldn&rsquo;t afford the medicines.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Khin That, 25, suffers from high fever and convulsions caused by malaria. &ldquo;A lot of patients live in mosquito-infested forest areas without access to mosquito nets or anti-malarial medicines,&rdquo; says Saw Aung Than Wai, a senior health worker at Mae Tao. &ldquo;It is probably the number one killer on the border.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Thirty-six-year old Maung Oo, who is yet to be diagnosed, is just one hundreds of Burmese who come to the clinic to receive treatment every day. Some have fled ethnic conflict and economic stagnation inside Myanmar, also known as Burma&mdash;many are members of the Karen ethnic group&mdash;while others are living in Thailand as migrant workers.</p>
<p>While many patients have to travel for days on poor roads to make it to Mae Tao, for many, it&rsquo;s the only way to receive free healthcare. When U Mya Aye contracted tuberculosis, it not only threatened his already fragile health, but the economy of his entire family. Unable to pay for his treatment and in serious financial debt after costly chest X-rays, the 53-year-old Burmese traveled across potholed dirt roads on the back of a truck to make it to the clinic. &ldquo;It was not easy to get here, but it saved me,&rdquo; he says.</p>
<p>Dr. Aya Tanabe, a volunteer from Japan, and Eh Ta Mwee, a senior medic, perform an amputation in Mae Tao&rsquo;s surgery ward. The Myanmar border area is littered with landmines, maiming and killing hundreds of people every year. At Mae Tao&rsquo;s prosthetics clinic, landmine victims and amputees receive free surgical and post-operative care, artificial limbs and rehabilitation.</p>
<p>Over 80 percent of all patients who receive prostheses at Mae Tao are landmine victims. All patients are very poor and cannot afford artificial limbs in Myanmar.</p>
Mae Tao is also training technicians, all of them landmine survivors, in the construction of prosthetics. Hundreds of Burmese landmine amputees have been fitted with prosthetic limbs and undergone rehabilitation since the prosthetics clinic opened in 2001.
Up to a dozen poor Burmese women a day give birth safely at the clinic's maternity unit. According to studies conducted by organizations affiliated with Mae Tao, the infant mortality rate in eastern Myanmar is 91 deaths for every 1,000 births, compared to an average rate of 76 for the rest of the country and only 18 in Thailand. At Mae Tao, all newborns are provided with birth certificates -- a crucial document in order to claim Burmese nationality in the future.
Myanmar has the fourth highest child mortality rate in the world with up to 150,000 children under the age of five years dying every year, according to the United Nations. At Mae Tao, children receive treatments ranging from acute surgery, immunization, de-worming and supplementary feeding.
In isolated rural areas, disease and malnutrition are endemic. This underfed and anemic boy is treated with a blood transfusion. “He is recovering fast,” says senior health worker Saw Aung Than Wai.

Lifeline on the border

Thailand
08.30.2010

The Mae Tao clinic, on the outskirts of the town of Mae Sot in northeastern Thailand, is the only source of medical care for thousands of Burmese along the volatile Thailand-Myanmar border.

Photos by Peter Biro/The IRC.

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