At least 30 children reported dead in Nanyun and Lahe
YANGON, AUGUST 4 (AP/AFP): An undiagnosed disease has killed more than 30 children in a remote part of Myanmar, officials said Thursday, with health authorities struggling to treat victims.
The illness, with measles-like symptoms, has hit the far corner of Myanmar’s northern Sagaing region, a remote and mountainous area which borders eastern India and is populated by people from the Naga tribes.
“We have this problem since two months ago and we haven’t received any help from the government yet,” said Kay Sai, a local administrator.
He said the deaths have been recorded in Nanyun and Lahe towns in the Naga region, one of the poorest in the country, about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from Yangon, adjoining India’s Nagaland state. He said most of the victims have been under the age of five.
Adults and children have both been struck since the outbreak first emerged in June.
“Altogether 23 children were have been killed in Lahal township and 13 killed in Nan Yon township since June because of this unknown disease,” Law Yone, a regional MP from Naga self-administrative region revealed to international news agencies.
“Rashes came out on their bodies; they have a fever and difficulty breathing because of coughing. Blood also comes out while coughing,” he said.
Some 200 people so far have come down with the disease, he said, adding that central authorities have been slow to react. A health ministry official in the capital Naypyidaw confirmed the outbreak, including more than 30 deaths, and said tests were being carried out.
“We assume at an initial stage it’s a measles outbreak or strong influenza. But we can definitely say only when we get the result from laboratory,” the official said, requesting anonymity.
Kay Sai said there has been no response from the Ministry of Health, or the Department of Prevention of Transmitted Diseases on the outbreak.
He said local authorities have temporarily banned people from traveling around to prevent contagion.
The outbreak highlights how vulnerable Myanmar’s more remote populations are in a country where healthcare was never prioritised under decades of brutal and inept junta rule.
The Naga area is the least developed part of Myanmar and is in utter neglect with the absence of even the most basic health care, education and infrastructure.
Law Yone said that the region suffers from inadequate transportation, insufficient number of health care workers and medicine. Because of the backwardness, even curable diseases have proved to be deadly in the past he said.
Healthcare is one of the many crippling legacies that the newly installed civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi is trying to tackle. Although budgets slightly increased in the last few years of outright army rule – which ended with last November’s elections – Myanmar is still one of the lowest spenders on healthcare as a share of GDP.
