Street Stories From Myanmar

This post is by Fiona Hyde, Project Coordinator – Mandalay, Myanmar.

Today we had half an hour to wander around the hospital grounds. Here is what we found….

Like the rest of Myanmar, development is occurring everywhere. This building will be completed before we arrive next year.

The Radiotherapy Unit. Instead of having machines that deliver localised radiotherapy to the target tissue, they have rooms to irradiate the whole body. The patients sit inside these special rooms whilst the nurse watches through a small window outside. We suspect with the extra money that is flowing through the community these types of units will be upgraded before our next visit.

Hospital and sanctuary. Amongst the relatives camping outside the wards, there is a very healthy population of dogs. The Myanmese have great respect for their animals and there are dogs everywhere.

Happily living together with the cats and dogs . This stray little kitty living in the hospital has been adopted by a girl who is staying on the grounds whilst her mother is being treated. So, is this the true Burmese cat? The cats here look like normal tabbie cats. After being shown a picture of what Australians call a Burmese cat, the locals say that there are no cats here like that. Does anyone know the true origin of what we call a Burmese cat?

We were so happy to have stumbled across Thiha Ko Ko as he walked out the hospital doors to start his new life. I reported on Thiha a few days back after he received an implant to a hole in his heart. 3 days later he is being discharged. Good luck Thiha!

At the end of day 4, we had operated on 29 patients at Mandalay General Hospital. There are 5 Australian teams working in different hospitals in Myanmar during this week so the impact of Open Heart International in this country is very significant… And we couldnt think of a better place to be.

Now we have to get back to work!