July 19, 2021
A volunteer fills an oxygen tank in Mandalay, Myanmar, on July 13, 2021.
Reuters
YANGON - For a week, 21-year-old student Phoe Thar has been out by dawn to gather oxygen cylinders from the homes of coronavirus sufferers in Myanmar s second city of Mandalay.
He and fellow volunteers line the tanks up outside charities for filling and returning, trying to save lives in a country whose health system has largely collapsed since a Feb 1 coup and which now faces its worst surge of Covid-19 infections.
Funded by donors on social media, Phoe Thar and his team are part of a growing grassroots effort to combat Covid-19 that bypasses the authorities and echoes the way Myanmar s people responded to crises during previous decades of army rule.
COVID response runs underground in junta-ruled Myanmar
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COVID-19 response runs underground in junta-ruled Myanmar
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