Burma Humanitarian Mission/SEE

Mission Statement

The Burma Humanitarian Mission is committed to providing urgently needed medical supplies to internally displaced people in Burma. Founded in May of 1999, BHM has successfully made several medical missions to remote Karen hill-tribe villages in eastern Burma. In January through March, 2001 we delivered a year's supply of medicine and medical supplies for roughly ten thousand people. This included funding and stipends for six backpacking medics. These medics travel from village to village and live with the Karen. They provide a variety of services, including: preventative medicine, midwifery, pediatric care, and trauma-oriented medical care. Our missions were photo-documented, and are available for slide-show presentations. Some of these images can also be viewed on our website: www.burmamission.org. The slide presentation focuses on the plight of the Karen and our efforts to assist them by providing medical care. It also relates some of the political history of Burma. Each year, we visit the border regions and determine which areas in eastern Burma have the most critical medical need. Then we sponsor Karen backpacking field medics to go into those areas and administer medicine. The medics travel surreptitiously into remote villages, risking their lives to provide medical care. We work to support the backpacking medics by providing year round funding for medicines, supplies, travel, and their most basic personal needs. There are currently six areas in Karen territory we are committed to assisting. Additionally, we invite U.S. Burma activists to travel to the border with us (we pay their own travel expenses) in order to learn. At the request of the Karen, we have also held computer and internet trainings.