‘Underground frontliners’ delivering oxygen in Myanmar

YANGON: For a week, 21-year-old student Phoe Thar has been out by dawn to gather oxygen cylinders from the homes of coronavirus sufferers in Myanmar’s second city of Mandalay.

He and fellow volunteers line the tanks up outside charities for filling and returning, trying to save lives in a nation whose health system has largely collapsed since the Feb 1 coup.

Funded by donors on social media, Phoe Thar and his team are part of a growing grassroots effort that bypasses the authorities and echoes the way Myanmar’s people responded to crises during previous decades of army rule.

“Since the number of people who need oxygen tanks is massive, it’s a huge challenge for us,” Phoe Thar told Reuters by phone.

Health Ministry figures showed deaths from Covid-19 reached a record 233 in Myanmar on Saturday, but medics and funeral services say the real toll is much higher, and crematoriums are overloaded.

A junta spokesman said last week there were difficuties in fighting the outbreak and urged people to cooperate with the government.

The junta’s critics say lives have been lost because of restrictions it has imposed on some private oxygen suppliers in the name of stopping hoarding.

The health system foundered after the coup as many health workers joined a Civil Disobedience Movement to oppose the junta.

Vaccination, testing and prevention measures all stalled.

One underground doctor who recently volunteered help on social media said he was inundated with hundreds of requests.

When he made house calls he found almost all the sick had coronavirus symptoms and most had low oxygen levels.

“The situation is severe,” he said. Groups of residents in Yangon and Kawlin said they were trying to raise money to import oxygen cylinders from Thailand and China.