The Burmese Junta has been in power for almost 50 years and its economic policies and disregard for its people have led to a devastating health crisis. Around half of the country’s budget goes directly to the army while less than one dollar is spent per citizen per year on health care. According to WHO, Burma has the second-poorest health care system in the world, only topped by Sierra Leone. Government hospitals lack medicine and doctors and nurses treat people according to the amount of lunch money, the fitting euphemism for bribe, the patients are able to provide. As a result half of all Asia's malaria deaths occur here; the country has some of the world’s deadliest strains of TB; and only recently did the regime acknowledge the presence of an HIV epidemic. Yet their estimate on its size is up to three times lower than most NGOs, who estimate up to half a million infected. Some even say a million. Even with the lowest estimate there’s a need for urgent treatment of 76.000 people, but currently less than 14,000 people are receiving life saving ARV medicine and hardly any of them by the state. The very few treatment programs being offered by overburdened NGOs are difficult to get into and almost impossible if one is not a resident of a few select program cities. Driven by this fact, monks and political activist are risking years of imprisonment feeding, sheltering and providing treatment to app. 150 AIDS patients with nowhere else to turn.
