Burmese Band-Aid: Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone

MAE SOT, Thailand - In the middle of a thatch building a ten-year-old boy waves a fan over the motionless, naked body of his two-year-old sister lying on a woven mat.

She is sick with malaria, like so many others at this clinic, but the ravages of fever have given way to her exhaustion. For now she sleeps.

Malaria, a preventable disease in this century of advanced medicine, is still rampant on the border between Thailand and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), separated here only by the Moei River.

The Mae Tao clinic, an unregistered medical center on the Thai side of the border, treated more than 6,300 cases of malaria in 2005 � by far the most prevalent disease.
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"The Burmese government isn't doing anything about mosquito abatement," says Terry Smith, a physician from Davis, Calif., who has volunteered at the clinic for as long as 18 months at a time. "More than 75 percent of our cases come from Burma."

The clinic was founded by Cynthia Maung, one of the first in a wave of refugees to seek asylum on the Thai-Myanmar border, following the violent crackdown of a short-lived pro-democracy movement in 1988 by the ruling military regime. Then known as the State Law and Order Restoration Committee (SLORC), the regime is now billed as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The military has governed Myanmar and viciously suppressed dissent for more than four decades.

Dr. Cynthia, as she's known at the clinic, fled to the Thai city of Mae Sot and joined other Burmese refugees, mostly ethnic Karen people who have been at war with the Burmese government since the country's independence in 1948. At 58 years, it's the longest active civil war in the world.

The clinic has grown to be an essential lifeline both for Burmese refugees living in Thai refugee camps, as well as mostly ethnic Karen people living on little slivers of border land inside Burma.

The clinic is supported by several non-governmental organizations and does not charge for its services. But it's by no means flush with cash.

Despite Dr. Cynthia's increasing profile � a mention in Time Magazine as a Global Health Hero and several international awards, including one from the Dalai Lama � the clinic faced a severe shortage of operating funds in 2004.

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