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3 September 2008
AAI to supply English Language teachers to Burmese Refugee System in Thailand.
Marc Preston, AAI's CEO has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Burmese Migrant Workers Education Committee. This body operates an important schooling program for refugees on the Thai/Burma Border at Mae Sot Thailand.
The signing of this MOU marks the beginning of an important relationship between AAI and BMWEC where AAI will supply quality English Language teachers for BMWEC's long standing program.
The first AAI supplied volunteers will arrive in Mae Sot on the 18 th of September, and the plan is to continually supply appropriate volunteers to the program from that date onwards.
The emphasis for AAI's volunteers is on enthusiastic, mature, reliable volunteers who are willing to work in austere conditions. The program allows volunteers new to humanitarian work, or contemplating a career, with an opportunity to experience this important development initiative and view first hand the terrible predicament of Burmese refugees living in Thailand. If you believe you have the appropriate personality and availability then please consider volunteering your time. Click here to take you to our Jobs page to volunteer today.
The pictures above depict volunteers teaching Burmese refugee children English Language skills in Mae Sot, Thailand
1 April 2008
TRAUMA MANAGEMENT TRAINING COURSE - 2008
AAI has again proudly assisted with the teaching of the Trauma Management Training Course (TMTC) that was conducted in consultation with the Karen Department of Health and Welfare (KDHW), and in partnership with the GHAP organisation. The aim of the TMTC was to train mobile health care workers (medics) to a level where they are able to respond to and care for victims of conflict related trauma.
The TMTC commenced in 2002 with the aim of training medical teams who could quickly get to the site of injured victims, resuscitate them and perform life saving procedures before transporting the patient to a referral clinic for further treatment and care. Since the inception of the course, medical professionals have conducted medical training through theoretical lessons, role-playing, practical workshops, simulation models and surgical labs.
Recent statistical analysis from the GHAP organisation and the KDHW indicates that of the victims who are alive when the trauma medics arrive, there is a 90 percent survival rate for land mine victims and an 82 percent survival rate for gun-shot victims.
In 2007, the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI), which measures achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment, and adjusted real income, ranked Burma 132 out of 177 countries. The HDI is considered the leading measurement of a country's real wealth - the potential of its people. It was estimated that in 2006, the Burmese Junta allocated only 0.3 percent of the country's GDP to health services; compared to nine percent in Australia or 15 percent in the USA. The World Health Organisation places the health care system in Burma in the 190 th position out of 191 countries; a staggering predicament for a country that was once referred to as the 'rice bowl of Asia'.
Urgent change is required throughout the entire country, but particularly so amongst ethnic nationalities such as the Karens and Shans who have long been the victims of persecution from the Government's State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Punitive measures, like the sanctions imposed by the USA, Japan, Australia and the EU, and intermittent talks instigated within the UN are likely to only bring about tokenistic reforms; meanwhile, immediate assistance is required in many socio-structural areas including health and education.
The Burmese Junta shows no signs of altering the debilitating legacy of conflict, poverty and institutional failure that have been the status quo for over half a century. The immediate challenge is to alleviate the economic and humanitarian crisis that is particularly acute in the eastern areas of the country.
AAI, along with the GHAP organisation, are addressing one key aspect of the humanitarian crises through medical training for Karen medics. This years course commenced with a one day mental health training package where students discussed various mental illnesses, the effects of trauma and stress, recovering from traumatic experiences and coping mechanisms that they can employ themselves and pass on to their communities. The days training was a great success in helping the medics understand important mental health concepts that directly affect them, the patients that they treat and their families.
The second portion of the course consisted of a two day Train the Trainer (TT) package. Whilst over 20 trauma medics attended the course, they represent only a small portion of the entire trauma medic personnel in Karen. As a result, the many skills that they learn and revise during this course will need to be passed on to other medics who are still operating throughout eastern Burma.
The TT package began with discussions of adult learning principles and moved into lesson planning and presentation. The students then participated in case study workshops and the development of their own procedure and lesson checklists.
The trauma portion of the course began with a night lesson and revision of anatomy and physiology; followed the next morning by primary and detailed surveys, bleeding control, shock analysis, fluid management and patient positioning.
Each day of the course began and ended with a practical exercise where each of the students had to perform their basic skills on a casualty with unknown injuries.
An orthopeadic surgeon managed the two-day orthopaedic workshop. She introduced concepts such as dislocation and fracture reduction, injury splinting and casting. The students learnt not only the theory of how and why these procedures are performed, but also how they can achieve the best possible results in a jungle environment.
Other doctors instructed on compartment syndrome, major limb injury and salvaging requirements. The students were instructed through theoretical and practical lessons on suturing, fasciotomies, and amputations.
The theory of injury mechanism, wound management and antibiotics was presented to students to ensure they understood the latest research from around the world and from recent developments in conflict zone medicine. Students also revised patient and equipment preparation for both minor and major surgical procedures. By the end of the course, all of the students had performed damage control thoracotomies and laparotomies, fasciotomies and amputations, surgical airways and chest tubing on simulation models and during the surgical laboratories.
Our guest Public Health Professional and Dentist presented an introductory lesson on dentistry, including oral hygiene, anatomy and dental procedures. Two practical demonstrations were given of tooth removal, including the removal of a decayed tooth from one of the students!
The final portion of the course consisted of pain management, local anaesthesia and general anaesthesia. The students also participated in a group discussion on the best antibiotics to use in different medical situations.
The course has now been developed to an excellent level where students have both a thorough theoretical understanding of trauma medicine, but also real practical experience that has instilled in them the confidence to perform difficult life and limb saving procedures in the jungles of Burma. AAI wishes to thank all of the instructors from the many different countries who attended and instructed on the course. Most of all though, AAI congratulates the brave and dedicated medics who risk torture, imprisonment and death in order to attend this course and complete their daily tasks as trauma medics in one of the world's most unrecognised conflict zones.
31 March 2008
A Case Study of Human Security in Burma: A Checkerboard of Insecurity........By Dominic Bowen
This paper analyses the current human security situation in Burma. It is contended the majority of the population living within the borders of the Burmese State suffer from low levels of human security. To understand what a ‘low level’ of human security is, we must first consider what human security means. A discussion of the most important aspects of this concept, as it applies in practice within Burma, will be considered.
Click here to download the paper.
20 August 2006
AAI Sends A Training Team To Mae Sot Medical Course, 2006
During August, 2006, six AAI staff members travelled to Thailand to assist in the conduct of a medical trauma course in the Mae Sot, Thailand, near the Thai-Burma border.
The course was convened by GHAP, the Global Health Access Program, which is a US based medical organisation committed to providing quality medical training and support to a network of Burmese medics who serve ethnic Karen Burmese refugees, in their struggle against the regime in Burma.
The 23 Burmese students who attended the course, made a perilous journey, in a very hostile environment, in order to benefit from the training provided by the course. They were trained in surgical techniques and life saving procedures designed to allow them to assist Burmese people, many of whom suffer from gunshot and landmine injuries. The course covered extended care techniques often necessary when caring for the injured in these conflicts. These networks of medics often have to evacuate their wounded, by foot, across 100kms of hostile territory, to reach the only hospital care available to them, sometimes illegally crossing national boundaries to find care.
At the completion of this initial period of training, the students immediately went back to begin applying the techniques learned on the course, in very difficult circumstances.
AAI staff were happy to volunteer their time and expertise to assist the doctors from GHAP in this important work. Mae Sot is a town set at a border crossing point in the east of Thailand, with a rich mixture of culture from Thailand and Burma. The town hosts a large number of Burmese refugees, who have fled the violence perpetrated on them by the regime in Burma, aimed at pacifying the ethnic Karen people, who constitute 10% of Burma’s population. The Karen people are staunchly pro-democracy, and support the, currently detained, politician, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The support of this course is another way AAI can serve their commitment to supporting those people, disadvantaged by circumstances and poverty, and in need of medical assistance.
