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HEADLINE: Malaria kills hundreds in
Myanmar
BANGKOK: Hundreds of Myanmar villagers have died of
malaria and other diseases after being relocated by the
government from their poppy farms in the Golden Triangle
to mosquito-infested areas, sources said.
The relocation of the Wa community from the mountains
near China to the border area near Thailand is part of the
Myanmar government's effort to slow down opium
production in one of the biggest narcotics producing zones
in the world.
A spokesman for Myanmar's military regime said on
Thursday that about 400 people have been "seriously
infected" mostly with malaria. He said medical teams sent
to the area three months ago have brought the disease
under control.
But sources at the Thai border with Myanmar put the
death toll at between 800 and 2,000 people. "It's absolutely
beyond doubt that large numbers of people are very, very
sick and many have died because they really have no
medical care available," said one respected observer of
affairs along the Thai-Myanmar frontier. He spoke on
condition of anonymity.
Heavy rains have worsened the situation with reports of
other diseases such as dysentery, typhoid and anthrax
spread by infected beef also claiming lives. A Thai army
intelligence officer in Bangkok, speaking on condition of
anonymity, estimated over 1,000 people around Mong
Yawn, a Wa town, had died and that army border units
have been on alert to prevent residents from the effected
area coming to Thailand.
Since January, the Myanmar government has shunted
between 130,000 and 180,000 Wa villagers, who used to
live on poppy farming, from their mountain villages to
hillsides near the Thai border and encouraged them to
grow fruit instead of opium.
But the change of environment is proving disastrous, as
they lack immunity to disease in lower elevations where
drug-resistant strains of mosquitoes spread deadly cerebral
malaria. The relocation was done with the approval of the
United Wa State Army, described by the US State
Department as the world's largest drug-trafficking
organisation.
Myanmar hopes the relocation will turn its corner of the
Golden Triangle into a drug-free area by 2005. And the
UWSA hopes it will help them move into other businesses
such as fruit farming.
The UWSA are former insurgents who made peace with
Yangon in 1989. They retain their weapons under the
agreement and exercise control over large areas of
Myanmar's rugged border with Thailand and China, where
they produce heroin, derived from opium, and increasingly,
methamphetamines.
Health workers in the northern Thai border province of
Mae Hong Son are also on guard amid fears that diseases,
especially typhoid, could be brought by migrants and
refugees from Myanmar, said Songvuthi Huthamai, the
provincial health office director. Toon Laikhun, a
Myanmar exile, said he has heard about the epidemic from
travellers from Myanmar.
"They said five to six people die every single day, mostly
children," said Toon of the Shan State News Agency, an
information gathering network sympathetic to
anti-Myanmar Shan insurgents along the border. (AP)
.
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