Mae Tao: Saving lives on the Thailand-Myanmar border

An amputation in Mae Tao’s surgery ward. The Myanmar border area is littered with landmines, maiming and killing hundreds of people every year. At Mae Tao’s prosthetics clinic, landmine victims and amputees receive free surgical and post-operative care, artificial limbs and rehabilitation. Photo: Peter Biro/The IRC

In the northern Thai town of Mae Sot I recently met U Mya Aye, a Burmese farmer suffering from tuberculosis. Unable to pay for treatment and in debt after paying for costly chest X-rays, the 53-year-old was told about the Mae Tao Clinic.  Located across the border in Thailand, the International Rescue Committee-supported clinic provides free health care to tens of thousands of Burmese refugees and migrants each year.

Mae Tao includes an emergency room, 200 hospital beds, surgical, maternity, and eye-care wards, a laboratory and a blood bank. There is even a prosthetics workshop which makes and fits artificial limbs for patients who have stepped on one of the many landmines that litter the border area.

Read a story about the clinic here.