Healthcare centers serving tens of thousands of refugees on the Thai-Myanmar border have been ordered shut after US President Donald Trump froze most foreign aid last week, forcing Thai officials to transport the sickest patients to other facilities.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which funds the clinics with US support, told the facilities to shut by tomorrow, a local official and two camp committee members said.
The IRC did not respond to a request for comment.
Photo: Reuters
Trump last week paused development assistance from the US Agency for International Development for 90 days to assess compatibility with his “America First” policy.
The freeze has thrown the global aid sector, which is heavily funded by the US, into chaos.
It was not immediately clear what impact a waiver for life-saving humanitarian assistance during the 90-day pause issued by the US Department of State on Tuesday would have, or how many centers across the nine camps housing about 100,000 people were impacted.
The health facilities on the border serve tens of thousands of refugees from conflict-torn Myanmar.
Bweh Say, a member of the refugee committee at Mae La camp, in Tha Song Yang district, and a local schoolteacher yesterday said the IRC had already discharged patients and stopped people, including pregnant women and people with breathing difficulties dependent on oxygen tanks, from using their equipment and medicine.
The camp’s water distribution and garbage disposal systems, which the organization had also been helping with, were also affected, they said.
Relatives of some of those who were discharged were “trying to find oxygen tanks” to bring home, Bweh Say said.
About 50 patients had been discharged, while several severely ill patients remained in the Mae La hospital, including a child recovering from heart surgery, the schoolteacher said, declining to be named, because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
“Normally that hospital receives about 100 out-patients per day and now none,” the teacher said.
Tak Provincial Governor Chucheep Pongchai told Thai media that the most severely ill patients would be transferred to local state hospitals, adding that officials have asked the IRC for use of their equipment.
Tha Song Yang hospital director Tawatchai Yingtaweesak said he was traveling to the camp to assess patients.
“We have to assess which patients can go home, which patients need help with oxygen and so on,” he said by telephone.
Nai Aue Mon, the program director of the Human Rights Foundation of Monland, a grassroots organization in southern Myanmar, said there was growing concern that basic healthcare needs in the camps would go unmet.
“It’s scary because these refugees depend entirely on this assistance for their day-to-day health services,” Nai Aue Mon said.
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