Myanmar: Health System Debate
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Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
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Myanmar: Health System
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I appreciate being allowed to speak briefly in the gap. Some of us will have had the pleasure—indeed, the overwhelming experience—of hearing Aung San Suu Kyi when she addressed both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall. A gentle light of hope emanated. Now, we see a country that is almost in freefall, with so much collapsing. There has been a collapse in health care, maternal mortality has increased to a level that one could not have imagined, and there has been such a drop in immunisation, as has been said, that infections are rife.
I was privileged to be on the call that has been referred to, and prior to that had been on a call with doctors from that country. They were risking their lives simply to tell us what was going on. They knew that if they were traced, they would be no more. They knew that their families were at risk. Many of them leave their families to go to provide health care to others, because they cannot bear to see their country’s collapse.
The attacks against hospitals are appalling. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is providing support through its global mechanisms, as other organisations are. I hope the BMA will raise this with the World Medical Association. We cannot just leave this. The journalists cannot get the images out, so we have quite a problem, because people do not realise just how terrible the situation is.
Even drivers transporting medicines are arrested, so trying to move supplies around is really difficult. It all has to be done subtly and underhand. If any of these people are caught, I am afraid that families sometimes find their family member delivered to their front door the next morning, dead. It is awful.
We cannot not intervene somehow. Many of the hospitals that are being bombed could do with early warning systems to detect aircraft, so that people can at least seek shelter. At the moment, they cannot.