One nun’s fearless compassion for HIV/AIDS affected people

Like many people in Myanmar, Sr Martha Mya Thwe from Maygon village in central Myanmar used to be afraid of touching people living with HIV/AIDS or administering medicine to them.

Dec 09, 2016

By John Zaw
Like many people in Myanmar, Sr Martha Mya Thwe from Maygon village in central Myanmar used to be afraid of touching people living with HIV/AIDS or administering medicine to them.

That changed in 2001 when Sr Martha, a nun from the St Joseph of the Apparition congregation, became aware of a dramatic rise in the number of people living with the virus in a small community in Mon State where she served. “I thought I must carry out HIV/AIDS ministry as a new call to service. I was inspired to overcome my fear,” she says.

“People were whispering about a rising number of deaths but they were not aware that people were dying from AIDS,” she says.

Sr Martha partnered with a Buddhist nun to found the Mirror of Charity Care Centre, a community-based organisation that provides food, medicine and educational support to AIDS orphans and people living with the disease.

“I feel warmth when I stay together with (the patients.) When I share meals with them, they often cry because their family and other members of the community have abandoned them,” Sr Martha says.

The centre operates on a quiet street in a Buddhist neighbourhood in Kyeik-kami, a small, rural township near the Andaman coast, about 88 kilometers south of Mawlamyine, the capital of Mon state.

Its mission is summed up in the centre’s slogan: To be AIDS-free, happy, healthy, and educated. A team of 13 laypeople help run the organisation.

The walls of the centre are filled with photographs of the nun embracing her patients — many of them children — and demonstrating the fearlessness and compassion for which she has become known.

Sr Martha is well-known in the Mon Buddhist town of 10,000 people. Only 50 Christians live there. Mon state has one of the highest rates of infection in the country along with Kachin, Shan and Karen states.

In the early days of its operation in 2001, patients died almost every day. At least 10 people died every month. “We couldn't do anything for them because the centre couldn’t provide anti-retroviral therapy (ART) at the time,” Sr Martha says.

The nun tried to source ART for years without success. However, in 2007, she got in contact with the main provider of ART in Myanmar and was able to get enough drugs to treat 20 patients.

The centre is now giving the life-saving medicine to about 103 children and adults. They are lucky.

Some 210,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS in Myanmar and only half of them receive ART, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres.

The centre began as a simple wooden hut in 2002 and has now expanded to a multi-building complex funded by the Japanese and German embassies. The complex includes a small plot of farmland, a facility for teaching vocational skills and the capacity to raise pigs and chickens.

“I started with only small things and whatever I could pull together to help people and we initially had no outside funding,” Sr Martha says.

The centre also runs a small clinic to provide primary healthcare to locals without HIV/AIDS. They can get tested for malaria and hepatitis and access counselling.

Sr Martha says that prior to 2011, the government closely monitored her work. The local authorities urged her not to carry out her mission. They frequently visited the centre demanding to know the source of her funding.

Things have improved since the introduction of nominal democratic reforms in 2011. Scrutiny has ended and the centre can now successfully register with the Ministry of Home Affairs as a community-based organisation.

Unlike her counterparts in other areas of the country, Sr Martha does not wear the traditional nun’s habit but opts for a simple blouse and longyi, adorned only with a cross that hangs around her neck. She says that her traditional religious garb was a barrier to connecting with her patients.

“I realised that wearing the traditional habit was a barrier to dealing with HIV patients. So I remain determined to wear civilian clothing to better integrate with the people I serve,” she says.

The nun is also looking to the future and to the next generation who will carry her work forward. In 2014, she spearheaded the creation of a new care centre in Kawthaung in southern Myanmar that provides ART to at least 500 people living with HIV/AIDS.

“Even after I pass away, I have urged my colleagues to continue this great service because it will be a long time before HIV/ AIDS will be no more.” --ucanews.com

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