Brave young Myanmar doctors head to disaster zone

YANGON (Reuters) - The young doctors of Myanmar treating cyclone survivors may see things many doctors never see.

Hundreds of doctors barely out of Yangon medical schools are taking crash courses on how to treat people in a disaster, choosing to work independently instead of going to camps run by a military government that has shut out many foreign aid workers.

At a one-day seminar organized by a Malaysian charity, an American psychologist talked about traumatized patients and two Swedish doctors told them what they would face.

"They are young, eager and brave," said Charles Randquist, who runs a plastic surgery clinic in Sweden. "And they'll see things most doctors have never seen."

They warned of the danger of bites from vipers that follow rats to food stores, rasping skin burns from wind and waves, infections and respiratory problems from water polluted feces, mud and fungus.

They drew up a rough plan of how to establish a medical station with toilets kept well away from water and food in an attempt to prevent cholera outbreaks in the Irrawaddy Delta, which was devastated on the night of May 2 by Cyclone Nargis.

"When we found we couldn't do surgery in the delta, we tried to help train as many people as possible," said the other Swedish doctor, Stefan Amer.

The pair, who worked in Thailand in the days after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, have given talks to 300 doctors in the past week as the toll of dead and missing rose to 134,000, with about 2.4 million believed to be destitute.

The World Health Organization says the health system is "highly under-resourced" in the impoverished Southeast Asian country of 53 million formerly known as Burma.