Support Backpack Healthworker Teams in Burma

Over the past 6 months, Burma Humanitarian Mission has supported the Backpack medics’ children with school and food support.  The Child Development Center – the school where the children attend classes – runs from mid-June through May each year.  At the start of the school year, children received the requisite school supply items:  uniforms, clothes, backpacks, lunch boxes, and stationary items (pens, pencils, paper, notebooks, etc).  Food items are purchased monthly.

The global pandemic has impacted the children’s education.  Thai authorities have imposed a very strict quarantine/isolation policy.  (For instance, travel between cities is largely prohibited.  When a person does travel, the traveler must quarantine for 14 days in the new location before mixing with the population).  In-person instruction has been curtailed at the CDC.  A few of the children live with the Backpack medic staff and have access to the internet; however, the majority of students do not.  For these children, each week, they collect paper copies of their schoolwork for their individual study in the CDC dorms where they live.  Older students strive to assist the younger students as best they can.  The medics’ staff also assist as they can.  

During this timeframe, 14 female medic trainees completed their course of instruction to become backpack medics.  The instruction occurred in an isolated, safe village along the Thai-Burma border, just inside Burma.  Thay Bay Hta is extremely remote, with no permanent electrical power or running water.  The women completed the 8-month course in December and have returned to their communities to join backpack medic teams.