Myanmar (Burma)

Overview
Irrawaddy Faces Project
Humanitarian Medical Aid
Myitkyina Schools
Rural Electrification

Cambodia

Overview
Vocational Education & Microfinance
Forest & Cultural Site
Rehabilitation

irrawaddy faces project

BSSPI pays medical treatment expenses for disadvantaged Myanmar children suffering from disease or birth defects.  Our efforts focus on the rural people of Myanmar’s Irrawaddy (Ayerwaddy) Delta -- the same population who suffered the devastating effects of 2008’s Cyclone Nargis.  The sponsored child and parents are brought to Rangoon for examination, diagnosis, and treatment at an adequate local hospital facility. Contributions to this project pay doctor and hospitalization costs (although surgeons often waive their personal fees for  these cases), medications, transportation expenses, and provide a small living stipend for an accompanying family member during the period of treatment. BSSPI administers this project directly in cooperation with local doctors that we know and trust.

During treatment, BSSPI acts as an advocate for the patient and her family, working to ensure quality medical care, helping family members with living and transportation arrangements, visiting the patient, and liaising with the medical team as necessary.  In no case do we support experimental procedures nor do we move ahead without full parental comprehension and consent, demonstrated competency of the medical facility and surgeon, and reasonable medical certainty of a successful outcome.  

Stories

Two-month-old Chit Phu Sone is from Irrawaddy Division. We met her in Rangoon General Hospital, in May 2009, where her desperate parents had brought her in with advanced nasal meningocele.

BSSPI located and obtained vital neurosurgical materials that were unavailable in Myanmar, sponsored her successful operation by Dr. Kyi Hlaing, and continues to assist her and her young parents in follow-up care. Here she is one week after surgery.

Meet Ei Nandar Htet, an eleven year old girl from Po Laung village in Myanmar’s southern Rangoon Division.  Her village of some 300 homes was flattened by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008.  Ei Nandar Htet and her family survived the 12-foot storm surge by clinging to a coconut tree as their home and many neighbors were swept away. 

Ei Nandar Htet was born with frontonasal encephalocele.  This is how she looked, in June 2008, when first we met.

BSSPI secured the help of a leading Myanmar neurosurgeon, Dr. Myat Thu, to correct Ei Nandar Htet’s condition.  During her long hospital stay,  BSSPI also helped Ei Nandar Htet’s father find new employment and housing, thus enabling the family to rebuild their lives post-Nargis.

Ei Nandar Htet showed enormous courage and stamina throughout five grueling months of hospitalization, four surgeries, and countless painful debridements.  Her mother never left her side.  Here she is five months later – a life transformed. 

Encephalocele appears as a fleshy bubble in the nasal area, on the forehead, or around an eye socket. It is a sac-like protrusion of the brain or surrounding membranes through a hole in the skull. The protrusion grows over time and can eventually engulf the victim’s face. A birth defect, encephalocele can be treated with varying degrees of success by competent surgery. This involves excising the fleshy tissue and using a bone graft to close a gap in the skull that fails to form properly during early pregnancy. For reasons unknown to us – perhaps dietary or nutritional -- there appears to be a heightened incidence of this condition in the Irrawaddy Delta and along Myanmar’s Rakhine coast.

Ten-year-old Aye Aye Phyo is from the same Irrawaddy village complex as Ei Nandar Htet. She is a beautiful child with a bright, curious spirit. When we first met her, she asked boldly, “Why aren’t you frightened of me? Doesn’t my face scare you?”

Aye Aye Phyo had not been examined by a real physician since infancy; although she suffered no pain, no one understood precisely what was wrong with her face. BSSPI recovered Aye Aye Phyo and her mother from their village in November 2008 and brought them to Yangon for a diagnosis. Aye Aye Phyo suffers from “cherubism” -- fibrous displasia or a benign granuloma in her left cheek that distorts or weakens the growth of normal facial bone tissue. Under our sponsorship, in March 2009, Aye Aye Phyo began a long-term course of treatment by an experienced Myanmar maxillofacial surgeon.