“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

On October 15th 2017, Hospitals Beyond Boundaries (HBB) teamed up with Old Girls Association (OGA) - Alumni Tunku Kurshiah College Batch 82-86 that consists of ladies from various background for setting up free clinic at Madrasah Darul Tahfiz Sri Al Ain that catered for the unfortunate Rohingya students. There were 4 medical volunteers and a group in charge for distributing free food packages to those Rohingya students and families.

The activities started with student profiling to gather information and continued with general health screening that included vision test, skin and hair check as well. All the 31 Rohingya students were very excited and happily cooperated to go through the health checkups, and then received free food packages from the sponsors at the end of the basic health screening.

As a matter of fact, an estimated 1.1 million Rohingya live in the western state of Rakhine, but their movements and access to services have been restricted. Rohingyas are barred from citizenship in Myanmar, where many call them “Bengalis” to suggest that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. There were almost 300, 000 or more members of the Rohingya community (of Muslim faith) in Buddhist-majority Myanmar who have fled across the border since early September. The refugees have been encountering with human rights abuses,  for instance, homes get burned, women raped, men beheaded and etc.

For those Rohingyas, health care service is something quite luxury. They tend to focus more on feeding themselves than getting the health checkups. They do not prioritise their money for health checkups. But, HBB believes that it has a global responsibility to improve health literacy among refugee patients by providing the basic standard of healthcare to every individual in fulfillment of human rights. The best it seems able to do is to provide humanitarian assistance to the innocent victims that involved in the unabating conflicts.

HBB is basically working with local partners on the ground to provide health care services to those in need. We hope to have this kind of collaboration in the future with any groups that are interested to contribute to the efforts. We invite everyone to stand by our brothers and sisters, and offer your support by donating any amount of donations to ensure the sustainability of our operating cost in assisting the free mobile clinics.

“We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.” (Ronald Reagan)