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SAN MAUNG MAUNG – 14 Years Old

San Maung Maung 14 years old. His is small for his age because of a heart condition he has had since childhood.  It is likely that he has a hole in part of his heart that prevents it from working effectively. Over the last two years this has left him feeling tired all the time, with less and less strength to play with his siblings and friends, or even go to school.  Sitting during the interview, his heart was beating hard enough to make his t-shirt tremble, something he finds frightening and exhausting.  The medics and doctors at the Mae Tao Clinic have diagnosed a severe heart murmur – the sound of abnormal blood flow in the heart – but San Maung Maung needs to have an ultrasound scan for a certain diagnosis before reparative surgery can be planned. The plan is for him to be travel to Chiang Mai for diagnosing test this month (November).

His is a twin, and lives with his three brothers and a sister in Ma Thera, a village in Burma, and they are all cared for by their grandmother, Daw Ma Htwe (63).  Their mother left Burma to find work in Bangkok long ago, and though she sends money regularly is only able to visit every few years.  San Maung Maung’s condition worries his grandmother, especially when she sees how little exercise he can tolerate before he has to rest.  His latest personal best was a slow walk around the small family house.  Besides his palpitations and breathlessness, San Maung Maung is also prone to fevers, which his grandmother treats with paracetamol when she can afford it, but she often has to resort to simply sponging him with cool water. 

The family don’t have enough money to afford a consultation with a Burmese doctor, and so San Maung Maung and his grandmother made the trip over the border to the Mae Tao Clinic after hearing about it from relatives.  It was a struggle even to save up the 6000 kyat per person needed to come to Thailand, an amount that would usually feed the whole family of seven for two or three days.  She hopes that this will be the first step towards having San Maung Maung’s heart condition treated, and that after this he will be able to go back to school and one day become a teacher, or a doctor.  San Maung Maung says he is looking forward to being able to go outside and play with his friends and his twin brother that is double his size. But as it stands, they all wonder how long he can last if he continues to grow weaker each day.

Rotary Fund have kindly agreed to sponsor San Maung Maung’s surgery

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