Responding to infectious diseases in Burma and her border regions

Introduction In January of 2007 an international scientific conference "Responding to Infectious Diseases in the Border Regions of South and Southeast Asia" was conducted by our collaborative group, and hosted by the Faculty of Tropical Medicine of Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand. The conference was something of a landmark, in that it attempted to bring together groups and individuals working on infectious diseases in Burma/Myanmar proper, those working on her border regions, and concerned representatives and scientists from the Burma neighbor states of Thailand, China, India and Bangladesh. Some 190 representatives from 9 countries attended, with representatives from Government, Academia, NGOs, relief groups including MSF France and MSF Switzerland, WHO SEARO Office and representative from WHO and UNAIDS in Burma/Myanmar, the U.S. CDC and USAID, and European donors including DFID. The diseases of concern included HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, neglected tropical diseases prevalent in Burma including filariasis, anthrax, Japanese encephalitis, and the emergent epidemic of Avian Influenza. What made this effort unique, and perhaps uniquely challenging, is that Burma/Myanmar was at the time, and remains at this writing, a deeply divided country, where scientific and humanitarian efforts have all too often been forced to choose between work "inside" the country and so with the approval or engagement of the ruling military junta, or "outside" the control of the junta, in partnership with non-Burman ethnic minority and democratic forces. As a measure of how divided the country can be, those on differing ends of the political spectrum do not agree on the name for country or her major cities and states. Those presenting data on Myanmar often have little accurate or current information on the border regions and may face government censorship over what data they do have – while groups working on the borders often know a great deal more about their areas of operation – but may be unwilling to openly divulge where and in what domains they are active for security reasons.