Mae Tao Clinic

The Mae Tao Clinic (MTC), also known as Dr. Cynthia’s clinic after its founder Dr. Cynthia Maung, is a community hospital which has provided good quality healthcare to the Burmese refugee population in Western Thailand since 1989. It is based in the border town of Mae Sot, approximately 500 km North West of Bangkok and serves a population of around 150,000 people who shelter in Burma's mountainous border region and, more recently, the growing Burmese migrant workers in Thailand who live in and around Mae Sot.

In 1988, during Burma's ruling military junta’s violent suppression of the pro-democracy movement, which culminated in the 1988 Uprising (see also 8888 Uprising), Dr. Maung was among many Burmese who fled across the border into neighbouring Thailand where she established a makeshift facility in Mae Sot to treat the injuries sustained by fellow refugees. In that year the clinic treated some 2000 individuals. The clinic has been there ever since and has grown in size to offer a wide range of health care services, social services, training, outreach programmes as well as child protection and health education. In 2006 the clinic saw 80,000 people pass through its doors.

Today, MTC continues to care for the sick and wounded refugees, mostly from Karen State, who have been forced from their villages (follow this link for a run down of the situation there ); villages which are invariably burned to the ground in the military junta's 'scorched earth' policy - part of an overarching doctrine known as the 'Four Cuts'.

In summer 2008 the American president, George Bush, visited Thailand with his wife, Laura. The Mae Tao Clinic was visited by Mrs. Bush, where she spoke of her support for Dr. Maung and the clinic's work.

Cynthia Maung - for some a latter day 'Mother Teresa of Burma' - was born December 6, 1959 in Moulmein, Burma (aka Myanmar). The fourth of eight children, she graduated from the Institute of Medication, University of Rangoon, in 1985. Since 1997, Dr. Maung’s contribution to the Burmese refugee community in Thailand has been widely recognised and internationally acclaimed. In the words of the Committee from the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership,

‘[i]n electing Cynthia Maung to receive the 2002 Award [...] the board of trustees recognizes her humane and fearless response to the urgent medical needs of thousands of refugees and displaced persons along the Thailand-Burma border’.

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Wikipedia