S P O T L I G H T D E P A R T M E N T S - The Taft School

S P O T L I G H T
Two years ago, Mary Washburne, M.D.,’79 was slogging away in her
family practice in Milwaukee, thinking there must be a more satisfying
way to make use of her hard-earned medical skills. After making some
inquiries into volunteer opportunities for physicians, Washburne, then 36,
decided to join Doctors Without Borders (DWB), an international relief
agency that’s among the world’s oldest medical service organizations. Within
months she got someone to cover her practice, rented out her house, and found
herself living in Thailand, working with Burmese refugees.
“The New York office [of DWB] chose the
mission,” Dr. Washburne explained as we
bounced along a rutted road one morning
early last year en route to Maw Ker, one of
19 refugee camps near the Myanmar (formerly
Burma) border. More than 100,000
Karen, a mountain tribe fighting for independence
from the Burmese government,
call these camps home. DWB’s program
in western Thailand assists the Karen in five
of the Burmese refugee camps.
“I was really lucky to end up with the
Karen,” Washburne said as she steered the
four-wheel-drive pickup clear of potholes
almost as big as the truck. “The Karen
have been the highlight of this entire experience.
Really an inspiration. They have
so little and yet they are so hopeful. Medically
it’s been fascinating, too,” She noted.
“At this mission we’re not dealing with just
one epidemiology—straight Ebola or
cholera—like in Africa. Here we’ve got the
whole stir-fry of diseases.”
This was the fifth month of her sixmonth
post, and Dr. Washburne had had
intimate contact with diseases she never
would have seen in her Milwaukee practice:
malaria, dengue, beriberi, tuberculosis,
cholera, and typhoid fever (which she contracted
just two weeks into her mission),
plus a potpourri of illnesses prevalent
among displaced people.
Although the first-time volunteer
had anticipated battling exotic ailments
during her stay in Thailand, she hadn’t
expected to encounter a full-scale war.
“Oh, those are just Chinese New Year
“Here, people don’t believe doctors are gods,
like we’re supposed to be in the West. They don’t
come into the clinic loaded with expectations.
They appreciate anything we can do to help them.”
firecrackers,” Washburne said dismissively
as we listened to rapid-fire popping in the
distance. It was the first week of February
and the Sino-Thai were celebrating in
nearby Mae Sot with an abandon that made
the festivities in New York’s Chinatown
look tame. Still, by the alarmed expressions
on the faces of the Burmese Karen gathered
outside town, I realized I wasn’t the
only one who thought the explosions
sounded like rifle shots. There was good
reason to believe that they were.
A few days earlier, two refugee camps
had been attacked in the dead of night by
Burmese soldiers who’d crossed the river
from Myanmar. After forcing the Karen out
of their beds at gunpoint, the invading
troops burned hundreds of bamboo homes,
leaving thousands of people huddled on
vast stretches of scorched, smoldering earth.
That same night, Thai authorities held off
the Burmese army’s attempt to raze a third
camp, Mae La, rescuing the homes of more
than 8,000 Karen.
The soldiers were now thought to be
hiding in the leafy jungles just inside the
Thailand border, hoping to repeat the destruction
they’d brought upon the Wanka
and Don Pakiang camps. By torching the
camps, the Burmese government aimed to
induce the Karen refugees to return home.
Her dangling earrings and shock of
blond hair glinting in the morning sun,
Dr. Washburne calmly peeled pus-soaked
gauze bandages from the back of a 33-
year-old man suffering from an acute
renal infection. Shooing away a swarm
of flies, she drained his oozing wound.
“The Karen call me Dr. Mary Wash-
Your-Hands because I’m always saying
that a few simple sanitary procedures can
go a long way,” she said while scrubbing
up for the next patient with a bucket of
water. “Sometimes, like now, sanitary
measures are all we have.”
4 Winter 1999