Dr Ray Comeau examines a Burmese refugee on one of his annual volunteer aid visits
Photo credit: Courtesy of Dr Ray Comeau |
As Cyclone Nargis hammered Burma early last month, killing tens of thousands and laying waste to vast swaths of the impoverished country, Dr Ray Comeau's thoughts turned to his patients. Not the ones he sees most days as a family physician and cosmetic laser specialist in Red Deer, Alberta, but the ones he visits once a year inside Burma and in refugee camps on the borders as part of his work with Medical Mercy Canada.
For days after he heard news of the devastation in Burma, he tried to reach fellow aid workers stationed on the country's borders, but to no avail. "I had no idea what was happening," he told NRM. "The people there are barely hanging on as it is," he says, "and then to throw a major catastrophe into the equation will mean cholera and other diseases." He goes quiet. "It was very upsetting."
His phone calls went unanswered. Anyone who's experienced something like this knows the maxim "No news is good news" is untrue. Helpless to do anything more, he sent emails and waited for a response.
ILLEGAL MEDICINE
Rewind to January, four months before Nargis struck.
Dr Comeau is sitting in the back of a Toyota truck, rumbling through the Thai jungle. Beside him sit other members of Medical Mercy Canada's 2008 mission to Burma, including his wife, Deryl, a nurse. The truck winds its way through the jungle, kicking up dust.
The unannounced trip by back roads through the jungle — circumventing the border checkpoints — is a necessity because Dr Comeau's mission is, technically speaking, illegal. The military junta that controls Burma forbids foreigners from entering the country's troubled state of Mon. And that's where Dr Comeau's medical aid mission is going.
BURMESE DISASTER
Sneaking into Burma — a country run by a repressive, nearly Orwellian regime — would seem to be fraught with danger. The junta, known to make important political and military decisions based on superstition and numerology, is aggressively xenophobic and power-hungry. The Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs urges Canadians not to visit. But Dr Comeau insists he and his crew are safe. "You always wonder, because there are spies around in the villages," he says. "But we haven't had any problems."
In 2005, Dr Comeau and Deryl Comeau had been considering joining a medical mission to the Philippines. One day, driving back home from Edmonton with the radio on, Mrs Comeau heard a physician describing his project treating Burmese refugees. They called Dr Myron Semkuley, the Calgary doc who runs Medical Mercy Canada's Burma project. Every year since, the Comeaus have headed to the Burmese border for up to two months, at their own expense. They now help coordinate clinics, aid workers and volunteers on Burma's eastern border with Thailand and its western border with India, where refugees with children in tow frequently arrive malnourished and emaciated after walking 30km to escape Burma.
After returning from this year's trip, in February, Dr Comeau told a Red Deer Advocate reporter that conditions were deteriorating for refugees. "They are running out of medicine. They're running out of dressings," he said. "They're running out of everything."
And then, in early May, the cyclone hit.
THE NARGIS CRISIS
After days of waiting for a response from his colleagues in the areas near cyclone-struck Burma, finally, a response.
A Medical Mercy Canada coordinator in the Indian foothills of the Himalayas, not far from the Burmese border, reported that the organization's workers and the areas it serves had emerged relatively unscathed.
The disaster has touched the Comeau family closer to home as well. He and his wife often help out the only Burmese family in Red Deer; their relatives live in the Irrawaddy delta region, at the centre of the worst destruction. The family still hasn't heard from them.
Dr Comeau will be back in Burma next January, this time accompanied by his youngest son. In the meantime, he's raising money for Medical Mercy Canada to build a maternity and child care clinic in Zokhawtar, India, and looking to sell his practice so he can devote more of his time to overseas humanitarian work.
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