13th July 2000
Last month I went to the fifty fifth birthday party of a woman I have never met. Burma Action Ireland had a party for Aung San Suu Kyi. There was a huge and delicious cake, courtesy of the Cake Box, Dun Laoghaoire. John Boorman, Director of "Beyond Rangoon", the film exposing the harsh behaviour of the military government in Burma, made a speech. Bono sang a song and I got in on the act because one of my sons was a founder member of Burma Action Ireland and I had been the collector of support signatures by Independent members of the Oireachtas for Suu Kyi's birthday card.
Suu Kyi's name is well known as the courageous election winner in Burma whose success led, not to power, but house arrest. She is a Nobel Peace Laureate and even when her husband was dying in England last year she refused to leave Burma to be with him knowing she would not be allowed re-entry.
But Burma Action Ireland made me aware of two medical practitioners who have been equally courageous in that benighted country. Cynthia Maung was only twenty eight when she had to flee from the clinic in which she worked in east Burma across the border into Thailand. She was a Karen, an ethnic minority group on whom a reign of terror was and is being waged by the military. Burmese politics are complicated and some ethnic minorities have been in conflict with the central government since independence but the present military government appears set on annihilating any groups who express opposition.
Dr. Cynthia, as she is now commonly known, set up a clinic in Mae Sot in Thailand. Here the sick are treated and medical aides are trained. The amount of work done in this tiny clinic in the jungle is staggering and she and her helpers make dangerous forays on foot into the jungle in Burma to bring the only medical help they have to the people of hill tribes. Now in her forties with two young children her devotion to her patients appears total.
My Burma Action son visited her clinic some years ago. (I implored him not to go again because I said if he was killed on the Thai-Burma border only his mother would know. Complaining outside Dick Spring's house, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, would be much more useful). He asked her what medical consumables she needed and she asked for urinalysis dipsticks. I posted her some and when my daughter went to Cynthia's clinic about a year later she said, yes, of course she'd got them, which says a lot for the international post.
Ma Thida, a surgeon and writer in her early thirties was sentenced to prison for objecting to the military regime. When in prison she continued to give medical treatment to her fellow prisoners. Her own illness lead to her early release from prison last year. She was Suu Kyi's assistant during Suu Kyi's successful, but disregarded, election victory.
How many of us would be prepared to make protests on behalf of our patients which would put us in danger of imprisonment or even death? Even the thought of a night in friendly Donnybrook Garda Station would turn my legs to jelly.
David Hickey took off his jacket in the middle of Croke Park and showed a slogan on his shirt supporting Cuba. It is the only bit of political protest from a medic I can remember for a long time.
Why aren't medical practitioners protesting more? During a medical debate in Seanad Éireann recently my colleague, Senator Liam Fitzgerald, called for courses in bedside manners for consultants who behaved, he said, like "pig house keepers". As the only so called pig house keeper present I said that there was no excuse for rudeness and lack of respect for patients or nursing colleagues (Senator Ann Leonard who is a nurse and midwife had raised this) but pressure of work gets at some more than others.
As the Haemophilia Tribunal winds on the lack of provision of money for the Blood Transfusion Board becomes more and more obvious. In the Ireland of the 80s we were short of money but the same cannot be said now. "Throwing money", as it is called, will not solve the problems in the Health Service but immediately providing the funds to appoint some of the consultants everyone is calling for would help. We will be having another tribunal in ten years time to work out why this didn't happen.
We should be far more open about the problems in the health service. Shoring up the service with non EU doctors is over and the Medical Council is right - these doctors have come here for training and if it is not available in a hospital then they are being hired under false pretences.
A little more militancy on behalf of our patients, and the world's patients, please. We won't be exiled or put in prison. Our Minister for Health, Micheál Martin, is not known for Zero Tolerance.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
