Myanmar: Ban on Doctors’ Group Imperils Muslim Minority

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Doctors Without Borders had been the only way for pregnant women facing difficult deliveries to get a referral to a government hospital, they said.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: The New York Times
By Jane Perlez | March 13, 2014

BANGKOK — Nearly 750,000 people, most of them members of a Muslim minority in one of the poorest parts of Myanmar, have been deprived of most medical services since the government banned the operations of Doctors Without Borders, the international health care organization and the main provider of medical care in the region.

The government ordered a halt to the work of Doctors Without Borders two weeks ago after some officials accused the group of favoring the Muslims, members of the Rohingya ethnic group, over a rival group, Rakhine Buddhists.

Already, anecdotal evidence and medical estimates show that about 150 of the most vulnerable have died since Feb. 28, more than 20 of them pregnant women facing life-threatening deliveries, medical professionals said. Doctors Without Borders had been the only way for pregnant women facing difficult deliveries to get a referral to a government hospital, they said.

At the time of the order, the government said it was suspending the group’s operations in Rakhine State in the far north, but it has offered no time frame for when services might be resumed. The deputy director general of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Soe Lwin Nyein, said in a statement that his department would manage the health needs of the “whole community.” A spokesman for President Thein Sein, Ye Htut, said the government dispatched an emergency response team with eight ambulances after the Doctors Without Borders clinics were closed.

Myanmar’s health services are among the most rudimentary in Asia, and with severe government restrictions on movement that prevent Muslims from seeking medical help outside their villages in Rakhine State, the impact of the shutdown will be severe, medical professionals said.

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