The adventures of the Myanmar surgeon in Congo

A life is a life, here or there, and they are all invaluable.

You may remember the heroic tales of Burmese doctor “Naga Thein Hlaing” who dedicated his life to treating “Naga” patients on the edge of Sagaing Region, literally putting his life on the line in an area roamed by Naga head hunters. Well, Myanmar is not short of charitable doctors operating in the most desolated parts of the country and – in this story – of the world.

Dr Pe Myat Win is a self-effacing surgeon who never asked for a life of adventure abroad, yet his life would make for an eventful book.
Back in the 1990s, the surgeon spent 13 years as a missionary surgeon in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country in central Africa formerly known as Zaire, saving the lives of indigenous populations.
Raised by a Christian family, his parents kept a diary since he was born in which they consigned their early hopes to see their newborn become a doctor. Sure enough, Dr Pe Myat Win graduated from the faculty of medicine in 1968.
After serving 10 years at different hospitals across the country and another decade at the Department of Surgery in the Institute of Medicine (2) as a teacher, his life was struck by a shattering blow that led him to become a missionary abroad.
“I was about to lose my married life and I was disinclined to work. When I was in deep trouble, I remembered God. I prayed hard to regain my family and promised him that I would dedicate my life to him if fulfilled,” Dr Pe Myat Win recalls.
His prayers were heard. True to his word, as his family reunited, the American Baptist Mission which sent him in a 650-beded general hospital in Vanga, a village 210 miles east of Kinshasa, capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He spent 11 years in that village.
“They wanted a surgeon with teaching experience to replace the foreign surgeon who had worked at the hospital for 30 years. I was a fit for this position,” he explains.
He arrived in Vanga in 1993. Vanga was poor and plagued by water scarcity. One of the challenges he faced was language barrier because everyone speaks French over there.
“Sometimes, we communicated in body language. Sometimes, I drew pictures to communicate. A year later, I could speak French,” he said.
“I came to know how poor it was when I got there: no television, no electricity, no shop and no football match,” he said.
When there was a shortage of water, the villagers couldn’t grow crops. They had never heard of fertilisers, he adds.
“When I heard Africa, I thought of wild animals. When I got to Vanga, I saw only snakes and mice. No animals survived in Vanga because residents hunted them when they suffered from a shortage of food. Even mice were lean,” he said.

Poverty was extreme in Vanga.
“[Villagers] came to the hospital for a bath. They only had one set of clothes. They’d wash their clothes while bathing in the river. After bathing, they’d dress in the same clothes,” he said.

Doctoring all day keeps the surgeon away
Coming from a teaching background, he taught house surgeons and nurses at the hospital. But most of his time he spent performing surgeries on patients.
“As a missionary, we travelled to the poorest place where nobody wanted to go to. There was no surgeon in the village so I had to deal with all patients and their problems even though some cases were outside of my domain,” he said.
Life got harder two years after his arrival. In 1995, the village experienced a deadly epidemic of Ebola. It was big news at the time because nobody had heard of Ebola then. The country then went through two civil wars from 1996 to 1998.
“I was also wrongly accused and put on trial by the military during the war but was later acquitted,” Dr Pe Myat Win recalls.
Like Myanmar, Congo is a tropical country. Similar diseases affect people in Myanmar and in Congo. For him, the big challenge lied in treating patients was HIV/AIDS.
“I saw many patients with AIDS. Some doctors would deny a surgery on a patient with AIDS as it can be transmitted through blood. If they performed, they would wear suits like an astronaut. We did not have such kind of protections. I proceeded with the operations because the patient would be likely to die if we didn’t perform surgery,” he said.
The risk is real. Exhausted surgeons are prone to contracting HIV while stitching up the wounds of an infected patient after surgery. The blood-stained needle may accidently puncture the surgeon’s skin.
“I prayed not to be contaminated. When I left Congo, I did a test, fortunately, I was HIV-negative,” he said.
He performed operations three days a week and surgeries on about 20 patients a day, excluding performing emergency operations for a burst appendix or a difficult delivery. Operations were always led by Dr Pe Myat Win.
“Every night, about two pregnant patients with difficultly in delivering came to the hospital,” he said.
Patients hardly came to the hospital, except for severe condition. With no cars or other vehicles, patients were carried on a rescue basket or stretchers.

Nursing home-sickness
With no telephone service, Dr Pe Myat Win contacted his family in Yangon by letters. It used to take three months for the letter to make the journey home. In 1996, Vanga received internet but Myanmar still did not enjoy such technology back then.
“Every four years, I returned home to see my family in Myanmar. I spent four or five months during my stay here,” explains the father of three children.
After spending 11 years in Vanga, Dr Pe Myat Win was sent to a 100-beded hospital in Kikongo, a small village where he worked for another two years till 2005.
He returned home in 2005. Since then he has dedicated his life to writing religious books. He has already published 10 of them.
“It’s good to save patients’ lives but the most important thing is to save their soul. Since I returned from Africa, I stopped performing surgeries. Instead, I write religious books,” he explains.
Doctor of the soul or of the body, in Myanmar or in Congo, Dr Pe Myat Win dedicates his life to the people. A story that would fit nicely in a book about the doctor turned spiritual author.