The Myanmar health crisis engulfing India’s under-resourced border state

“Mizoram state is financially very poor,” says Biakthansangi, the only paediatrician at Champhai district hospital, located at the northeastern border of India. The state has long been in dire need of funds from the federal government, especially for medical assistance. But the situation escalated in February 2021 when the Myanmar military staged a bloody coup and some 30 000 refugees fled over the border to India.

Sharing the longest section of Mizoram’s porous 316 mile border with Myanmar, Champhai has received the most refugees. In February 2022, the district received 8000 refugees on a single day after gunfire was reported in the Myanmarese towns of Haimual, Rih, and Khawmawi. Authorities say that, although some refugees returned home after the violence subsided, most have stayed in camps or are living with relatives and in rented accommodation in Mizoram’s border towns and villages. They mostly get by on donations from the church and money raised by local civil society groups in the state and by charities abroad. Local authorities said that the district had 9144 refugees at the time of writing.

This has put a creaking medical system under more pressure, further complicated by the fact that India does not recognise the migrants as “‘refugees” nor is it a signatory of the international conventions on refugees.