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The Burma Humanitarian Mission is committed to providing urgently needed medical supplies to internally displaced people in Burma. Founded in May of 1999, BHM has successfully made several medical missions to remote Karen hill-tribe villages in eastern Burma. In January through March, 2001 we delivered a year’s supply of medicine and medical supplies for roughly ten thousand people. This included funding and stipends for six backpacking medics. These medics travel from village to village and live with the Karen. They provide a variety of services, including: preventative medicine, midwifery, pediatric care, and trauma-oriented medical care. Our missions were photo-documented, and are available for slide-show presentations. Some of these images can also be viewed on our website: www.burmamission.org. The slide presentation focuses on the plight of the Karen and our efforts to assist them by providing medical care. It also relates some of the political history of Burma. With the generous support of Witness, we brought a small video crew on our 2001 mission and recorded over 60 hours of video and audio footage in Karen villages. These recordings document our mission and consist of interviews with villagers and medicsmany of whom are victims of extreme human rights abuses. We also have footage of medical treatments, historical information, and cultural elements depicting the texture and richness of traditional Karen art, music and dancing. The World Health Organization ranked Burma 190 out of 191 countries in its 2000 World Health Report. The international condemnation against the SPDC has been strong, and thus many corporations are avoiding doing business in Burma. Some U.S. corporations, such as UNOCAL are profiting off of the forced labor and lack of environmental protection in Burma; however, "No New Business in Burma" legislation in the U.S. and the more recent ILO sanctions cuts the SPDC off from a lot funding from the outside world. This is considered an effective and peaceful strategy for undermining the power of SPDC; however, many humanitarian agencies that would help the people of Burma have been kept out as well. The SPDC provides no medical support to the Karen and effectively blocks care coming from the outside world. The Karen live in eastern Burma in the mountains between Burma and Thailand. The SPDC subjects Karen villagers to forced labor, systematic destruction of villages and crops, forced relocation, pipeline construction, extortion, looting, arbitrary detention, torture, sexual assault and summary executions. Often living in hiding, many Karen people no longer have access to their food crops and traditional medicine. People live without access to clean water or basic public health services, precipitating the spread of malaria, HIV, typhoid and tuberculosis. Forced into hiding, the Karen often live in areas which have malarial strains that are among the most virulent in the world. Each year, we visit the border regions and determine which areas in eastern Burma have the most critical medical need. Then we sponsor Karen backpacking field medics to go into those areas and administer medicine. The medics travel surreptitiously into remote villages, risking their lives to provide medical care. We work to support the backpacking medics by providing year round funding for medicines, supplies, travel, and their most basic personal needs. There are currently six areas in Karen territory we are committed to assisting. Additionally, we invite U.S. Burma activists to travel to the border with us (we pay their own travel expenses) in order to learn. At the request of the Karen, we have also held computer and internet trainings. Our Goals:
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