| HEALTH AND
EDUCATION
Burma is today in the midst of a health and educational crisis. All
social services in Burma, including the country's health and educational
systems, have suffered terribly under the thirty-nine years of military
dictatorship since 1962. Basic infrastructure has been neglected, while
priorities have been decided and funds allocated on military-ideological
bases rather than genuine need. Since the current military junta
reasserted direct army rule in 1988, health services have further
deteriorated, and universities have been closed for most of the last
thirteen years.
Like many developing countries, Burma faces an enormous task of bringing
modern medical care, sanitation standards, and basic health education to
a predominantly poor and rural population of about 50 million people. In
many areas, preventable or treatable maladies such as malaria and
malnutrition are rife. Outbreaks of plague are still reported. And
according to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 530,000 people
may already be HIV-positive in a spreading pandemic spurred by
intravenous drug use.
Yet very few of the country's resources are being directed to
improvements in this area. Burma's military junta, the State Peace and
Development Council (known from 1988-1997 as the State Law and Order
Restoration Council, or SLORC), has made the social welfare of Burma's
peoples a low priority. In its ''World Health Report 2000,'' the WHO
ranked Burma next to last -190th of 191 countries surveyed -in terms of
overall health system performance. This is in line with United Nations
statistics that show the regime spends over 200% more on its military
expenditure than for health and education combined. Only a few countries
in the world, such as Iraq and Syria, have a worse ratio. These UN
figures might in fact underestimate the junta's military spending; the
regime is still expanding an army whose main role is to suppress
domestic demands for democracy. Of 174 countries rated in the United
Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index for 2000,
Burma ranked 125th, placing it barely ahead of the impoverished and
resource-poor African states of Equatorial Guinea and Lesotho. Forty
percent of Burmese have no access to safe water, and sixty percent lack
basic sanitation. Since 1991, a handful of international
non-governmental organizations have begun work in Burma. However, the
regime's controls over health assistance programs are so strict that
many others refuse to operate in the country. This is effectively
crippling crucially-needed AIDS awareness programs, which are already in
full swing in neighboring Thailand and India, which also face HIV crises.
The AIDS epidemic is most intense in Burma's northeast, which suffers
the combined effects of HIV spread both by intravenous heroin use and
sexual transmission. In both areas, the military regime has failed to
act to stem the epidemic. The junta's cease-fire agreements with some
ethnic groups allows the production and trading of heroin. Burma's
border areas are awash with cheap supplies of the drug, which is also
plentiful in the country's largest cities, Rangoon and Mandalay. Heroin
is far cheaper than the syringes required to inject it, and so addicts
routinely share needles.
The epidemic is also spreading through sexual contact. Many young women
from Burma's diverse hill peoples have been forced or lured into
prostitution in Thailand. As many as 40,000 may be in the trade at any
given time. Tragically, a large percentage become HIV-positive within a
few years. Here, too, the Burmese military has at best taken no action
to ameliorate the trafficking of women into prostitution, and local
commanders are accused of abetting the trade.
These and other health problems are exacerbated by the military junta's
brutality and repression. Torture, other physical mistreatment, and the
casualties and additional consequences of long years of warfare with
armed ethnic opposition groups are obvious problems. The Burmese army is
also one of the last in the world to use landmines. Less apparent is the
lack of accountability and free expression that prevents people from
obtaining information or demanding that their government meet their
needs.
There is no free press in Burma, and the few independent publications
that comment on social issues are heavily censored. Criticism of the
regime or its polices is not tolerated. In this atmosphere, Burma's
peoples are neither informed nor educated regarding health matters and
have no say in how these problems are addressed.
The lack of freedom of expression is even more evident in the
educational arena, where army efforts to suppress dissent and even mild
criticism of its rule and policies has led to the evisceration of what
was once a strong and expanding education system. For instance, teaching
English in schools was banned by decree from 1966 until 1980. Nearly all
Burma's universities and colleges have been shuttered for extended
periods since students helped lead the 1988 democracy movement, and they
were closed for almost four years after student protests in December
1996. Some are now partially reopened, but on a highly restricted basis,
and almost entirely without academic freedom. Most curricula are out of
date by decades. University course syllabi require military clearance,
and all campus activities are very closely monitored by military
intelligence.
Yet Burmese students who reach university are a lucky elite. On the
primary level, only about one-third of the one million children who each
year begin their school careers will finish four years of school.
Prospects for further education are few. Some educators have been
imprisoned or dismissed for non-violent political activities. Others
have quit teaching out of economic necessity; on average, a teacher's
pay is equal to only about US$5 monthly. Some teachers have also left
their positions to avoid mandatory political indoctrination sessions.
Access to education is most restricted in impoverished rural areas where
families cannot afford official and unofficial fees demanded of
students. In ethnic minority areas along Burma's frontiers, army
offensives have also disrupted normal life, and children are often
forced to serve as laborers or even as military porters in combat areas.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes. Even where
schools exist, the ethnic-Burman dominated army has often banned
teaching in local languages, raising fears of a "cultural cleansing"
of non-Burman peoples who make up 40% or more of the population.
Among at least 250,000 Burmese refugees who are today in Thailand,
India, and Bangladesh, health and educational services are even more
limited. The National Health and Education Committee (NHEC) which
includes representatives of 27 groups opposed to military rule, was
created in 1995 to serve refugees and people inside Burma who could be
reached from border areas. The NHEC is seriously constrained by a lack
of resources and uncertain security along Burma's frontiers. Its efforts
have emphasized basic literacy and primary health care for people almost
entirely without social services.
The junta remains largely in denial regarding the scale and urgency of
Burma's AIDS crisis. Universities are seen as an enemy, rather than an
engine for development. The military regime's spending priorities focus
on procuring weapons and expanding its army. Until Burma enjoys a
responsible and accountable government, significant change is unlikely.
A regularly updated, on-line version of this backgrounder is available
at:
http://burmaproject.org/crisis/health.html.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Burma Project, Open Society Institute
400 West 59th Street, 4th floor
New York, NY 10019 USA
tel: (212) 548-0632 fax: (212) 548-4655
e-mail: burma@sorosny.org; http://burmaproject.org
Action Contre la Faim (Action Against Hunger)
4, rue Niepce 75014 Paris France
tel: (33-1) 4335 8888
e-mail: acf@acf.imaginet.fr; http://www.acf-fr.org
875 Ave. of the Americas, Suite 1905
New York, NY 10001 USA
tel: (212) 967-7800 fax: (212) 967-5480
e-mail: aah@aah-usa.org
Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
8, rue Saint-Sabin 75544 Paris Cedex II France
tel: (33-1) 4021 2929 fax: (33-1) 4806 6868
e-mail: office@paris.msf.org; http://www.msf.org
6 East 39th Street, 8th Floor New York, NY 10016 USA
tel: (212) 679-6800 fax: (212) 679-7016
e-mail: doctors@newyork.msf.org;
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Asia and
the Pacific One United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017 USA
tel: (212) 906-5828 fax: (212) 906-5825
e-mail: shantiballo@undp.org
or asia-pacific@undp.org;
http://www.undp.org
UNICEF Asia Section,
Programme Division
3 UN Plaza New York, NY 10017 USA
tel: (212) 326-7000 fax: (212) 887-7465/7454
http://www.unicef.org
World Concern
24/A Aung Min Gaung Avenue Kamayut Township,
Rangoon, Burma tel: (95-1) 511 440 fax: (95-1) 511 440
e-mail: worldconcern@crista.org;
http://www.worldconcern.org/
World Vision PO Box 9716 Federal Way, WA 98063-9716 USA
tel: (253) 815-1000 fax: (253) 815-3446 1-800-511-6596
http://www.worldvision.org
PUBLICATIONS:
Article 19. Fatal Silence: Freedom of Expression and the Right to
Health in Burma. London: Article 19, 1996.
Article 19. Our Heads are Bloody but Unbowed: Suppression of
Educational Freedoms in Burma. London: Article 19, 1992.
Beyrer, Chris. War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast
Asia. New York: Zed Books, 1998.
Beyrer, Chris. "Accelerating and Disseminating Across Asia."
The Washington Quarterly (Winter 2001), pp. 211-225.
Human Rights Watch/Asia. A Modern Form of Slavery: Trafficking of
Burmese Women and Girls into Brothels in Thailand. New York: Human
Rights Watch/Asia, 1993.
Smith, Martin. Burma (Myanmar), Academic Freedom 3: Education and
Human Rights. London: Zed Books, 1995.
Southeast Asian Information Network. Out of Control: The HIV/AIDS
Epidemic in Burma. Chiang Mai: Southeast Asian Information Network,
1995.
UNICEF. Children and Women in Myanmar, A Situation Analysis 1995.
Rangoon: UNICEF, 1995.
United Nations Development Programme. UNDP Human Development Report
2000. New York: United Nations Development Program, 2000.
United Nations Programme on HIV/AID and the World Health Organization. Epidemiological
Fact Sheet: Myanmar. Geneva: UNAIDS/WHO, 2000.
World Health Organization. World Health Report 2000. Geneva:
World Health Organization, 2000.
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Burma:
Country in Crisis was prepared by Open
Society Institute's Burma project
Content:
Republished
with permission from Open
Society Institute
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