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Coronavirus: Myanmar outbreak hammers health system shattered after coup
- Myanmar’s anti-coronavirus campaign foundered along with the rest of the health system after the junta seized power on February 1
- Thirteen doctors have been killed and some 150 health workers have been arrested, with hundreds more wanted on incitement charges
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Breathless, fevered and without the extra oxygen that could help keep them alive, the new coronavirus patients at a hospital near Myanmar’s border with India highlight the threat to a health system near collapse since February’s coup.
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To help her tend the seven Covid-19 patients at Cikha hospital, day and night, chief nurse Lun Za En has a lab technician and a pharmacist’s assistant. Mostly, they offer kind words and paracetamol.
“We don’t have enough oxygen, enough medical equipment, enough electricity, enough doctors or enough ambulances,” Lun Za En, 45, said from the town of just over 10,000. “We are operating with three staff instead of 11.”
Myanmar’s anti-coronavirus campaign foundered along with the rest of the health system after the military seized power on February 1 and overthrew elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose government had stepped up testing, quarantine and treatment.
Services at public hospitals collapsed after many doctors and nurses joined strikes in a Civil Disobedience Movement in the forefront of opposition to military rule – and sometimes on the front line of protests that have been bloodily suppressed.
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