The Mae Tao Clinic, also known as Dr. Cynthia's clinic after its founder Dr. Cynthia Maung, is a community based organisation, which has been providing primary healthcare service and protection to community from Burma/Myanmar 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 - 250,000 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. Mae Tao Clinic has average 110,000 consultations annually. Of them 52% reside in Thailand, who are mostly undocumented and displaced due to armed conflicts or/and poverty and other 48% cross the border to seek health services.
History
In 1988, during Burma's ruling military junta's violent suppression of the pro-democracy movement, which culminated in the 1988 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 ; 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.
MTC Objectives
To provide health services for displaced Burmese populations along the Thailand-Burma border.
To provide initial training of health workers and subsequent corollary medical education.
Cynthia Maung - for some a latter day 'Mother Teresa of Burma' - was born December 6, 1959 in Moulmein, Burma. 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,
‘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’.
Despite her substantial contribution to the local community the Thai government does not officially recognise Dr. Cynthia's citizenship status; she is essentially a stateless person and does not, therefore, enjoy basic citizen rights. This makes her existence in Thailand a precarious one and has always cast doubt over the clinic's future.
