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Back Pack Health Worker Team — Mid-Year Impact Report 2025

Delivering Lifesaving Care to Conflict-Affected Communities in Burma/Myanmar

(Reporting period: January–June 2025)

Overview

For over 25 years, the Back Pack Health Worker Team (BPHWT) has brought lifesaving healthcare to people living in conflict and remote regions of Burma/Myanmar—communities cut off from formal medical services. In 2025, BPHWT’s 120 mobile teams served a target population of 318,666 people across 21 field areas, providing a critical safety net for displaced and vulnerable families in Karen, Karenni, Mon, Arakan, Chin, Shan, and Kachin States, and other regions.

Despite worsening insecurity, airstrikes, and forced displacement, BPHWT health workers continued to treat patients, educate communities, and protect mothers and children with extraordinary courage and resilience.

Health Services Delivered

Between January and June 2025, BPHWT health teams:

• Treated 53,727 patients, including 9,807 children under five.

• Delivered emergency care for war injuries, malaria, respiratory infections, diarrheal disease, and hypertension, among the top illnesses seen.

• Provided 511 emergency referrals, including 169 obstetric emergencies (EmOC).

• Conducted 183 lifesaving operations through partner clinics.

• Delivered maternal and child health services to thousands of mothers and newborns, including family planning and antenatal care.

Community Health and Prevention

Through the Community Health Education and Prevention Program (CHEPP), BPHWT helped communities strengthen health from within:

• Installed 2 gravity flow water systems, 2 shallow wells, and 100 latrines, giving over 1,500 people access to safe water and sanitation.

• Provided 80 household water filters to vulnerable families.

• Reached 41,899 students in 407 schools with hygiene education and kits.

• Delivered Vitamin A supplements to 38,883 children and de-worming medicine to 35,512 children—helping prevent malnutrition and infection.

• Conducted 97 nutrition awareness workshops for 2,800 participants, focusing on infant and young child feeding (IYCF) and maternal nutrition.

Women and Children First

Women make up the majority of BPHWT’s workforce—75% of all members, including 620 trained traditional birth attendants. Through the Maternal and Child Health Program, teams provided emergency obstetric care, family planning, and safe deliveries under extreme conditions, ensuring that mothers and babies receive the care they deserve even in hiding sites and IDP camps.

Security and Humanitarian Context

Conflict has intensified across Burma/Myanmar since the 2021 coup, with airstrikes, arbitrary shelling, and forced conscription driving millions from their homes. In the first half of 2025 alone, BPHWT documented mass displacement across Kayah, Karen, Kachin, Chin, and Shan States. Many families now shelter in jungles without clean water or food.
Health workers face grave risks—airstrikes, landmines, and roadblocks—but continue to deliver care, often traveling by foot or boat to reach isolated communities.

Special Challenges

A major funding gap following reductions in international aid (including USAID support) has created critical shortages of medicines, transport, and stipends for health workers. Clinics have been forced to operate with minimal supplies, while demand for trauma and maternal care continues to rise.
BPHWT urgently calls for renewed donor support to sustain these frontline teams and prevent a collapse of the community-based health system that ethnic communities rely on.

Impact Snapshot (Jan–Jun 2025)

Looking Ahead

BPHWT remains steadfast in its mission to bring health and hope to those living beyond the reach of formal care. In the coming months, priorities include:

• Expanding emergency response and referral systems.

• Replenishing medical supply chains through cross-border partners.

• Continuing nutrition, maternal health, and psychosocial programs for displaced families.

• Training new village health volunteers to strengthen community resilience.

Your Support Saves Lives

Every contribution to BPHWT helps deliver medicines, fund emergency referrals, and sustain the courageous health workers serving Burma’s most vulnerable communities. Your generosity ensures that even amid war, health care continues to reach those who need it most.

In February 2025, Burma Humanitarian Mission (BHM) traveled to Mae Sot, Thailand, to visit the headquarters of the Backpack Health Worker Team (BPHWT)—the frontline organization delivering lifesaving medical care to displaced communities deep within the conflict zones of Burma (Myanmar). What we found was deeply concerning: a vital healthcare network under threat due to a devastating halt in funding.

This crisis is a direct result of the U.S. administration’s decision to freeze all USAID support to refugee and humanitarian programs in the region. Despite a federal court order to resume funding, not a single dollar has been released. The consequences are already being felt across the Thai-Burma border.

USAID funding has long been the backbone of humanitarian operations here, providing 62% of all financial support for refugee services. These funds sustain nine refugee camps housing 88,000 people, aid 200,000 vulnerable villagers in southeast Burma, and support essential organizations like the Mae Tao Clinic, the Child Development Center (CDC), and BPHWT.

For BPHWT specifically, USAID funding made up 43% of their annual budget—over $520,000. This money enabled the training, equipping, and deployment of over 50 backpack medic teams who bring healthcare to people in places no one else can reach. The impact of the funding freeze is both immediate and heartbreaking.

In response, BPHWT is being forced to triage their mission.

• The Medical Care Program will continue as the top priority, ensuring that the most critical treatments and emergency interventions remain available.
• Community health and prevention programs are being scaled back, despite their long-term benefits in building healthier, more resilient communities.
• Training for new medics will be limited, although essential, entry-level training will still be provided to keep new recruits coming into the field.
• Stipends for field medics have been slashed by 30%, dropping from $74/month to just $51. For the people doing this brave and dangerous work, this reduction represents more than a financial burden—it’s a blow to morale and sustainability.

To put it in perspective, last year field medics received $882 per year. That figure is now down to $618. These are men and women who risk their lives every day to serve their people—trekking through jungles, evading military patrols, and carrying backpacks filled with medicine, gauze, and hope.

This situation is not sustainable. And it’s not acceptable.

Now, more than ever, Burma’s backpack medics need our support. With your help, BHM can step into the funding gap and ensure these frontline heroes have what they need to continue their critical work. Together, we can keep healthcare alive in the most forgotten corners of the world.

Join us. Donate. Advocate. Stand with the medics.