The combined impact of Covid-19 and the coup is hitting pregnant women especially hard.
Chit Su Phyo, 33, was eight months pregnant when she suddenly developed a fever. When it became clear that she had contracted Covid-19, a frantic quest began to save her life and those of her unborn twins.
Over the next 10 days, she and her husband, 34-year-old Yan Naing Soe, went to one hospital after another. Armed only with a referral letter from a government healthcare centre, they pleaded for help that was never forthcoming.
They tried Yangon General Hospital, the Phaung Gyi Covid-19 Centre, and the Thingangyun, North Okkalapa and Insein township hospitals, only to be told that they were all full.
Finally, after a few more failed attempts, they went to their eighth, and last, hospital: the Yangon Central Women’s Hospital in Lanmadaw Township. There, they were told, they would surely be accepted.
But when they were turned away once again, they had no choice but to give up and go home. It was on this return journey that Chit Su Phyo’s condition grew precipitously worse.
As they were making their way through the city in a vehicle operated by a local charity, the oxygen tank that they carried with them ran out of the precious commodity that she needed to stay alive. Her oxygen saturation level dropped to 60% before plunging to 31%—far below the minimum level of 94% needed to sustain the body’s basic functions.
They raced back as quickly as they could, but they were too late. Chit Su Phyo was still breathing, though just barely, when they reached their door, but Yan Naing Soe couldn’t get to their spare 40-liter tank in time to save her.
“It destroyed me,” he said, describing the moment he realized he had lost his wife and their two soon-to-be-born babies.
source myanmar-now
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