And that it truly is, serving the Buddhist, Muslims, Hindus and Christians of Yangon city. We were greeted at the entrance by hordes of patients lined up to collect their prescribed medications. The out patient department was calling patient number 346! And it was only 10:30am. Our group arrived laden with bags of medical supplies, donations in kind from Canada, making for difficult passage in an already very crowd space.

The donations we bring include sutures, anti-biotics, ambu-bags, multi-vitamins, skin oitments, surgical blades, steri-strips,

Fortunately, we’ve joined up with Nina & John Cassils, and their very worthy and credible non-profit Myanmar Relief effort. John and Nina have been heroes on this side of the world, selflessly working 20 hour days raising awareness and funds, and making sure that all relief gets to the people in the worst affected areas. Nature’s Path is having the honour of contributing several pallet loads of energy bars that will make a difference between life and death for many families. I heartily urge all who can help with food, medicine, water purification equipment and funds, to support legitimate Myanmar Relief, where every day, every hour counts.”
Arran & Ratana Stephens

This week, CW Asia Fund received a very generous donation of Pharmasave Children’s chewable multi-vitamins, Gastrolyte oral rehydration salts and Nexcare first aid Steri-strip for closing small cuts. These products will be used by Dr. Frank Smithuis and staff in rural Yangon.

We are very grateful to Mr. Lap Wu for making these critical products available.

Thank you!

Source: UNICEF Myanmar May 22, 2008 11:16am

Can you work effectively in Myanmar?

“You can work here very well, and to say that you can’t is a lie,” said Frank Smithuis, a physician and the longtime country director for Medecins Sans Frontieres. “Look, the human rights record is shaky, yes, and it’s politically nice to beat up Burma, but the military has actually been quite helpful to us.” Dr. Smithuis said the delta had recovered well enough – and that enough other agencies were working there – that he had deployed his staffers to poorer, needier parts of the country.

“Because of sanctions there is a lot of suffering, and we see that particularly in the humanitarian-aid field,” said Frank Smithius, Myanmar country director for Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders. “There’s definitely hope in the aid community that the policy will be reconsidered.”

“The Myanmar people are victims of a humanitarian boycott,” Smithius said. “There is enormous pressure on politicians in the West to look politically correct, and they get human rights brownie points by being very strict on aid.” (Source: Myanmar loses aid to political “brownie points” – Bloomberg 5 May 2009)

“Why is Myanmar the lowest recipient of overseas development money in the world? This is the result of political pressure to restrict humanitarian aid to Myanmar, arguing that aid cannot reach the population of Myanmar. This argument is not valid, hampers humanitarian aid and increases the suffering of the Myanmar people. We have experience that it is possible to guarantee that foreign aid can directly reach the people of Myanmar. Large-scale health projects, with good monitoring systems that guaranteed that donor money directly benefits the population, have been set up and proven to be very effective to save lives of Myanmar people” (source: Dr. Frank Smithuis frank.m.smithuis@gmail.com)

Frank Smithuis, MD, PhD.

Frank has worked for 20 years in South East Asia, first as a clinical doctor in a Cambodian refugee camp (1988-1992), than as project coordinator in West Cambodia (1993-1994), and later as medical coordinator and general director for MSF in Myanmar (1994-2009). In Myanmar he built up the largest medical programme of MSF in the world, with over 10 million patient consultations. In 2005 he received a PhD for Malaria research in Myanmar. frank.m.smithuis@gmail.com

Our first trip was with Serge Pun and Associates (SPA) travelling from Yangon to Pathein with 109 of their donors, volunteers and staff all involved with the initial emergency response. It quickly became apparent as to why international aid agencies all had so many difficulties and were met with a logistic nightmares trying to deliver assistance to the homeless victims of Cyclone Nargis.

We departed Yangon City at 7:00PM for the 100-mile journey on a very rough road. After arriving in Pathein 10 hours later, at 4:30am, we transferred to an express riverboat for a further 4-hour trip arriving at the village of Auk Pyun Wa on Middle Island at 9:00AM. At one point our river boat lost its steering coming to a halt up on mud flats due to deep fishing nets set up by local village entrepreneurs.

Our visit as a happy occasion, to witness the formal dedication ceremony attended by 35 foreign donors, 40 local donors and suppliers, 25 SPA logistics personal and field staff. The villagers had stayed up most of the night in anticipation of our arrival and this special ceremony.

Cyclone Nargis slammed into Middle Island (Hainggyi Island) completely burying the entire island underwater and completely destroying most villages, and trees in its path including the entire fishing village of Auk Pyun Wa as it sat exposed on the eastside. The population of 589 was reduced to 368, with 127 huts, the monastery, the pagoda, the primary school, and four shrimp paste factories were badly damaged or destroyed. SPA, a Myanmar and Singaporean based business, chose the task to rebuild one of the 50 totally destroyed villages in the 700-kilometer area assigned to them and other local businesses by the Burmese government. SPA ‘s choice of rehabilitation was to create an “environmentally sustainable pilot village” as a model for the entire SE Asian region with the expert knowledge of the Israeli team lead by Dr. Efraim Laor, world leader on large scale sudden disasters. The funding was provided by the Singaporean Red Cross (80%) and by private local and foreign donors (20%). The Burmese government supplied the timber, alu-zinc roofing sheets and concrete.

The result includes 125 homes constructed at a cost per home of $900 USD, each with running water and electric lighting (solar powered), a common gravity storage water tower, elevated walkways, a new river pier, a village administration building, a village medical clinic, a primary school, and a substantial two storey concrete building, raise on concrete pillars for a community center and a refuge in the case of future life threatening storms or tsunamis. The total cost for the entire village was less than $500,000 US!

It was such a contrast to the horrors experienced by these villagers just a few months before. Few trees and shrubs remained after Cyclone Nargis swept through. Following the formal dedication and handover ceremony, monks gave blessings and a feast and ceremonial activities followed.

The second stop on this journey was a nearby village, Thin Gan Gone Village, which is just starting to rebuild new housing and a new medical clinic. The cost of this clinic, fully equipped, will be $10,000USD. The concrete shell of a pre-existing building will be used to make way for healthcare. CW Asia Fund has committed to fund this much needed clinic. The pre existing structure will provide a cost effective building that will be able to withstand future flooding.

When the storm struck this village located on low lying land on the west side of a stream, the stream became a raging torrent that washed out the small wooden bridge. The villagers in this lower village drowned, as they could not cross to reach the nearby higher village. SPA had just completed the construction of a new large concrete bridge that will withstand future floods so that this tragic outcome will not be repeated.

AZG sent 250 national staff from the large existing programmes in Myanmar and used the medical reserves that were already present in the country.

In the first weeks AZG sent out 8 distribution teams to ensure the distribution of food (rice, oil, fish, beans) and non-food items (sheeting, bed nets, blankets, toolkits) and 8 watsan teams to clean up ponds and wells. Distribution was executed at household level, ensuring that all recipients did acquire the necessary items. AZG sent also 28 mobile medical teams to conduct medical consultations, set up feeding centers for malnutrition and opened 8 fixed clinics in the Ngapudaw and Laputta townships.

The slogan of this charitable hospital is “For the poor of all communities” and that it truly is, serving the Buddhist, Muslims, Hindus and Christians of Yangon city. We were greeted at the entrance by hordes of patients lined up to collect their prescribed medications. The out patient department was calling patient number 346! And it was only 10:30am. Our group arrived laden with bags of medical supplies, donations in kind from Canada, making for difficult passage in an already very crowd space. The donations we bring each year include sutures, anti-biotics, ambu bags, multi-vitamins, skin ointments, surgical blades, steri-strips, dental instruments and book.

Nina Cassil’s visit to Myanmar this Christmas will be her 13th visit to Southeast Asia in eight years. She can’t help it. She and her husband fell in love with that part of the world during their travels and can’t stop going back. But the couple’s most recent visit will also be an arduous journey as they travel by bus and boat to see how money from their CW Asia Fund helped aid those in the path of Cyclone Nargis in May. While large non-governmental organizations struggled to get food and medicine to residents of the Irrawaddy Delta, the Cassils delivered 8,000 pounds of donated medicine with relative ease.

“I don’t know why the international community just feels that they can’t work or do anything because of the government, ” Nina Cassils said. “It’s really not the case.” Governments could have easily partnered with aid agencies, including World Vision and Save the Children, which operate in Myanmar, said Cassils, a 54-year-old resident of Point Grey who talked to the Courier Wednesday on the phone from Hong Kong. Working with aid agencies is exactly what the Cassils did. The Clinton Global Initiative invited the Cassils to Hong Kong to talk to international heads of state, non-government organizations, businesspeople and philanthropists about how they can work together to improve education and public health and tackle problems involving energy and climate change in Asia.

“There’s been so much focus on Africa with all the celebrities, all the rock stars and the actresses and actors and the Gates Foundation and the Clintons…For the last four and five generations money’s been thrown at Africa and it still has not lifted them out of poverty, ” Cassils said. “Twice as many poor people live in Asia.”

The Cassils have done philanthropic work in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. John Cassils, the retired founder of Strand Development Corp., worked in Hong Kong and Thailand in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the couple would take side trips and explore the countryside, making social connections along the way.

John Beeching, a retired Roman Catholic brother from Victoria who now lives in Bangkok, has served as their mentor. Beeching has done development work for 40 years, speaks Burmese and possesses a deep understanding of an array of religions. He teaches Buddhism in Austria and Taoism in Hong Kong.

The Cassils’ work isn’t based on religious belief–they see their efforts as strictly humanitarian. The Cassils registered their fund with the Tides Canada Foundation three years ago at the urging of their friends Sue and Wieland Wettstein from Calgary. The full name of their fund is the Cassils Wettstein Asia Fund. They’ve solicited money from others only since Cyclone Nargis hit. They previously spent their own money combined with generous donations from friends, family and colleagues to help grassroots agencies improve the health and education of children in countries including India, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. The victims of Cyclone Nargis remain in dire straights, with 500,000 families in Myanmar without aid. To focus on helping those families, Cassils and CW Asia volunteer Leanne Chan created the Myanmar $5 for 5 Campaign, which runs until Christmas. Donors can give $5, which feeds five families for a week.

“I’d never want someone to ever think that what they have to give is too little,” said Cassils. “This shows the impact of our currency. The value of our money abroad is so valuable and it can help so many.” Chan hopes those who can’t afford to donate will pass information about the campaign on to five friends. Cassils has packed all kinds of medical equipment for their trip which will take them to Cambodia and Myanmar. She gives items to local groups to disburse when they do outreach. “There’s things that we take for granted,” she said. “The hospital we support in Myanmar has one laryngoscope [to look down throats]. They see 450 patients a day.”

For more information about the Myanmar $5 for 5 Campaign, see www.givemeaning.com