• Saturday, October 30, 2010
• Inter Press Service

As efforts to control malaria intensify in the region, the significance of a busy health clinic in Mae Sot, a Thai town close to the Burmese border, stands out even more. It is the Mae Tao clinic that an increasing stream of Burmese migrants heads for in order to get treatment for malaria, after they cross Thailand's porous western border.

'We treated 7,000 patients for malaria last year; 70 percent were from Burma,' says the clinic's well-known founder, Dr Cynthia Maung. 'The number of patients increase by 10 percent every year,' said Dr Cynthia, a member of the Karen ethnic minority, many of whom fled military-ruled Burma two decades ago to escape oppression.

The malaria patients going to the Mae Tao clinic, who are among the nearly 120,000 who come for care every year to this health outpost, are a vulnerable, mobile population, she reveals during a telephone interview from the border. 'They come from far away places inside Burma. People don't have exact locations and have no access to good health care.'

The Mae Tao clinic is one in a vast network of health clinics that has sprouted up along the frontlines of Thailand's battle to control the spread of malaria. Currently, 900 clinics dot the borders that this South-east Asian kingdom shares with Burma, also known as Myanmar, and Cambodia. 'The health ministry supports 400 of these border clinics while another 500 malaria posts are supported by the Global Fund,' says Dr Wichai Satimai, director of the bureau of vector-borne disease at the Thai public health ministry. 'They offer a combination of health care and also have awareness efforts to stop the spread of malaria.'

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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