Than Oo* stopped working on 3 February 2021. Instead of driving to Mandalay General Hospital, as he has done nearly every day for 15 years, he took to the streets. Thousands of medical workers across Myanmar did the same.1 Their mass walkout in protest against the coup marked the start of a nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) that has brought public services to a virtual standstill.
‘It was a really difficult decision,’ said the 40-year-old. ‘I had to leave my patients.’ As it is, he was contending with the lingering fallout of previous junta rule. There was a time, he remembers, when patients arrived for operations carrying their own surgical equipment. By starving the healthcare system of funds, the generals had decimated it. Even after budgets grew, out-of-pocket payments for medical treatment in Myanmar soared and remain one of the world’s highest.2 ’I won’t let [dictatorship] happen again. We have to stop it – especially for our next generation.’
