Category: International
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Time for a bit of history about MAM. Started by a husband-wife doctoring team (Frank Smithuis formerly of MSF and Ni Ni Tun) (right) nearly a decade ago when they took over a closing MSF facility in a desperately poor part of Yangon, it has grown despite numerous obstacles into a slick organisation fulfilling its…
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Now as blog first paragraphs go, what follows would be oddly described in my teenage years and in the company of my long-haired hippy university peers as ‘heavy’, so apologies. But what is happening in Myanmar is just like a sequel in a box-set of ‘life-of-a country’ series. And it seems to transpire nearly every…
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As any nursery child will proudly inform you, six minus two equals four: and that’s my blog debt to date. And it’s also true that the perennially patient web-keepers who oversee the sites where these embarrassing missives are published are looking elsewhere for someone to take over my role. But, unfortunately for them and for…
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I realise now that if you write a blog, you tend to gravitate to the same old topics which can be a tad tedious for readers but is comfortable home territory for the author who, if like me, starts and finishes penning these without any idea as to what he’s going to tap out on…
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Trifle late with the blogs so you, whoever you poor souls might be, have three to catch up on as quickly as I can write them. So here I am back in Yangon, refreshed after a 6-week break summer back home being a retired but not too inactive pensioner, returned, reinvigorated and ready for action,…
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Two London doctors, Will Wynter Bee and James Denny, underwent one of the hardest physical challenges to raise money for Saving Lives. Through generous sponsorship they have raised over £1500 for Swaziland’s Saving Lives. This was not without its challenges. They swam 3.8km followed by a 180km cycle and finishing off with a marathon in…
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‘Google Image’ Putao and you see an idyllic town at the foothills of the Himalayas, far from the madding crowd with undulating hills, see-through blue rivers, snow-capped peaks, and seemingly perpetually bathed in glorious sunshine. Lest you be fooled, this is not the sort of destination in the Abercrombie and Kent brochure for would be…
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They say the British always talk about their bowels. I must admit to being culpable of this habit and so I promise to make this an (almost) tummy-related free blog. The trouble is that there is an embarrassment of riches for the ID physician, everything from simple malaria to Zika and dengue, from filariasis to…
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Now normally Saturday morning is blog-time in my Western paradise, the Myanmar plaza. However, instead I was scaling what was rather exaggeratedly called Hpa Pu mountain (it took about 45 minutes to climb): views of course stunning. But weather changes with the blink of an eyelid here and I was soon in the thick of…