Limited Healthcare in Myanmar Worsens Quake Toll

Many Blame Junta's Attacks on Facilities and Workers for Hindered Emergency Response

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YANGON - Myanmar academic Sophia Htwe spent hours desperately trying to call home from Australia after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck her home town in Myanmar in late March, and learned that a childhood friend had been trapped in the rubble.

Friends from the central northwestern region of Sagaing told her that she had been freed but had died from her injuries after receiving no medical treatment.

"That just really broke me... This is actually the failure of the military junta and the military coup," she said, referring to the junta's attacks on healthcare since seizing power in February 2021.

The earthquake, which killed more than 3,700 people and injured 5,000, quickly overwhelmed a severely depleted healthcare system, in which the number of doctors and nurses had fallen dramatically under military rule, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) figures.

Many blame the situation on attacks on healthcare facilities as the military administration sought to root out opponents to its rule, after medics took a prominent role in the anti-junta movement that emerged after the coup.

That meant many victims of the earthquake went without immediate medical attention or had to wait a long time to receive the care they needed, according to two doctors, two opposition activists and two human rights groups.

Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights said doctors had reported medicine and staff shortages and described patients whose wounds had rotted in the absence of medical care.

In a joint statement on April 29, they said the military's "years of unlawful attacks on healthcare facilities and workers" had severely hindered the emergency response.

The situation was compounded, they said, because some medical workers were too afraid of arrest to operate in junta-controlled areas or scared of passing through checkpoints to reach areas where they were needed.