About Us

The Back Pack Health Worker Team (BPHWT) was founded to empower local communities to provide primary healthcare services to underserved populations in conflict affected areas of Burma, particularly in areas that international humanitarian organizations cannot reach. The formation of the BPHWT was led by Dr. Cynthia Maung, who has served as chairperson since its inception. Dr. Cynthia, a Karen physician who fled Burma as a result of her involvement with pro-democracy activities, initially established the Mae Tao Clinic in 1989 in Mae Sot, Thailand, for the thousands of students also forced to escape Burma at that time. Over the years, the clinic has developed into a comprehensive healthcare facility offering a wide variety of services, as well as medical and public health education training hundreds of healthcare workers.

In 1996, responding to increasing Burma Army attacks in eastern Burma and a worsening humanitarian crisis, Dr. Cynthia began sending mobile medical teams to provide primary health care in Karen, Karenni, and Mon States in eastern Burma. These teams were separately organized by the Mae Tao Clinic, ethnic health organizations, and individuals, and worked independently. In 1998, Dr. Cynthia and the Burma Relief Centre began to organize meetings of Mon, Karen, and Karenni health workers who desired to become more united and organized in providing care in their home communities just across the border. Recognizing the benefits of collaborating to standardize healthcare services throughout Eastern Burma, they agreed to work together to provide health services to vulnerable populations in conflict affected areas, while still providing care through clinics already established by their respective health departments across the border. A year later, this group of health workers formed the core of the BPHWT. The BPHWT was initially made up of 32 teams and 120 health workers serving a target population of 66,000 people in Mon, Karen, and Karenni States.

BPHWT strives to provide assistance based on community needs. Providing assistance in this manner requires respecting the traditions and culture of each community, utilizing local resources, collecting data in order to assess the unique needs of each community, seeking community feedback, and partnering with other local organizations that provide health-related services in Burma. Health workers, trained traditional birth attendants/traditional birth attendants (TBAs), and village health volunteers/workers (VHVs/VHWs) are from and work in their home communities, and therefore speak the local language and are familiar with the health issues and risk factors particular to their area. The training and skills, which these staff and health workers develop by working with BPHWT, empower them to improve the health of their own communities as well as other communities in Burma.

BPHWT promotes a system that relies on community-based human resources. As community members continue to increase their health knowledge and capabilities, they are more able to serve as health resources for their communities, thereby reducing reliance on clinic-based and BPHWT services over time, and ensuring communities’ ability to protect public health at a grassroots level. BPHWT continually provides training, supplies, and support, but it is the local populations who become more empowered and take charge of providing healthcare for their own communities.

So from our past of 32 Back Pack teams, the BPHWT now has more than 120 teams with a network of over 1600 members serving a targeted population in excess of  300,000 vulnerable and other people in Karen, Karenni, Mon, Shan, Kachin, Chin, Arakan States, and portions of Eastern Bago, Tenasserim, and Sagaing Regions of Burma. The BPHWT has occupied, and will continue to occupy a unique position in providing primary healthcare services to displaced and vulnerable populations in Burma, while at the same time, building a long-term, locally-sustainable, primary healthcare infrastructure for Burma. The BPHWT looks forward toward the day when its health workers become an integral component of a viable healthcare system in a federal union of Burma with peace, justice, and equality for all of its people.

Team & People

To realize our vision and accomplish our mission and goal, mobile back pack teams of three-five trained health workers provide a range of curative and preventive healthcare services to their own communities. The members of each team work together to provide all program services, with at least one health worker occupying a leadership role for the Medical Care Program, one for the Community Health Education & Prevention Program, and one for the Maternal & Child Healthcare Program. However, all team members share responsibilities as well as communicate with each other about their programs, helping to identify and meet community needs. The health workers in each team share their responsibilities and work closely together throughout the target area.

These health workers carry essential medicines, medical supplies, and data forms in their backpacks, and some teams carry more specialized equipment such as surgical tools for trauma patients. Each team has a targeted population of  approximately 2,000 people, traveling between the villages in their assigned village tract to carry out their duties. They also travel to and serve numerous small, temporary communities of internally-displaced persons who are hiding from state and non-state armed groups.

The teams typically carry enough supplies to treat 2,000 people in a six month period, but occasionally they encounter larger populations needing services due to the unpredictable security situation in many of the areas in which BPHWT works. Back Pack teams spend a minimum of three days in a village, but different lengths of time are spent with each community depending on the movement of communities and the need to avoid Burma Army forces, with some communities becoming inaccessible if the route becomes too dangerous. However, as members of the communities they serve, local BPHWT staff is familiar with the local terrain and security situation, and are usually able to overcome these barriers to provide healthcare services to otherwise unreachable populations. Thus, the BPHWT occupies a unique position, circumventing the Burma Government’s many restrictions to monitor and report on the health status of these vulnerable populations, as well as to deliver vital health related services.

BPHWT provides services in areas of challenging physical terrain, made more challenging by barriers imposed by the Burmese military regime. Despite these circumstances, BPHWT’s mobile design, flexibility, and cohesion with the local villages enables teams to provide consistent, high-quality healthcare to communities outside of Burma’s central healthcare system and to communities in active conflict areas. The mobile nature of BPHWT’s teams allows them to reach the least stable areas in greatest need. When teams of health workers are not present in a given village, TBAs and VHVs/VHWs from each community are present and continue to provide basic care and referrals. These TBAs and VHVs/VHWs, trained and supplied by Back Pack teams, are embedded in their local communities. This local network ensures constant access to basic services in between visits from the Back Pack teams, helping to provide service continuity even in the case of a sudden change such as displacements.