The surgeon was in the middle of operating on a patient whenthe squad of soldiers entered the hospital looking for doctors to arrest. KyawSwar said. Kyaw Swar’s close call last month came asMyanmar’s security forces intensify their crackdown on doctors who oppose themilitary junta that seized power 14 months ago. Doctorshave been at the forefront of a nationwide civil disobedience movement that hascrippled the economy, and the regime has targeted health careworkers from the start.
In recent weeks, thesecurity forces have arrested doctors at their homes and hospitals, revokedthe licenses of prominent physicians, searchedhospitals for wounded resistance fighters and threatened to close health carefacilities that employ doctors opposing the regime. ForMyanmar soldiers, who are notorious for stealing fromcitizens, going after doctors is also a convenientway to make money, since doctors are among the country’swealthier people. During arrests, soldiershave seized cash, gold, jewelryand vehicles worth tens of thousands of dollars. Insome cases, army officers have demanded as much as $5,000 not toshut down a private hospital, hospital officials said.
Throughout the country, barely40 percent of the population is fully vaccinated for Covid-19, andmany patients are left without routine care. WaiMyo, who was fired from Mandalay GeneralHospital last year for joining the protest movement. Inits attempt to force doctors to work in facilities it controls, themilitary has shut down at least a dozen clinics offering free medical treatmentand demanded that private hospitals and clinics hand over the names of patientsand their medical history. As it hunts down anti-regime doctors andwounded combatants, the regime has branded people seeking carefrom underground clinics as «illegal patients».
« I want to be a good citizen, so Ijoined the civil disobedience movement. I want to be agood doctor, so I’m giving free medical treatment topatients». Mandalay General Hospital, amajor teaching hospital in Myanmar’s second-largest city, hasbeen at the center of the protest movement since the start. Doctorsin Mandalay have been much slower than those in other regions to return to workat government-controlled centers.
Last month, thecity’s health director and the army general who is Mandalay’s chief commandersummoned private hospital owners to a meeting and informed them that thelicenses of 14 medical professors and leading specialists at Mandalay GeneralHospital would be revoked, according to hospital owners who attendedthe meeting. The loss of highly trained doctors can havelife-or-death consequences for some patients. LieuShin, a rice farmer from Kalay, 160miles northwest of Mandalay, is in desperate need of a kidney transplant, andhis brother has agreed to donate one. But MandalayGeneral Hospital, the only place in the region where suchsurgery could be done, no longer has a team of doctors capable ofperforming the operation.