dear stan,
we have many khin maung wins in burma, no less in the medical world,
the senior ones being; dr khin maung win, professor of pathology and
director-general of medical education department, now deceased,dr
khin maung win, professor of medicine specialising in tropical
medicine, now living abroad,dr khin maung win, professor and head of
liver ward,RGH, the hepatologist.now i like to write about the
hepatologist "professor dr khin maung win" as he likes to be
called.this is his pseudonym too.
this hepatologist dr khin maung win is a close friend and a former
student of mine.he told me that he attended the combined
postgraduate courses on basic medical sciences given in rangoon in
the early 1970s when sayagyi dr u ba than was the dean of the all
the medical postgraduate courses in burma.he decreed that all the
postgraduate courses must be taught in rangoon, all under one
roof,under one authority, by the same teachers to maintain high
standard and to be recognised by the royal colleges of medicine and
surgery of england/UK. syagyi dr u pe thein who started the M.Sc.
(Physiology) course in mandalay in 1967 was at a loss as no one
dared to challenge u ba than in those days.but, i was very close to
sayagyi u ba than and was an unofficial assistant to him in the
postgraduate matters.so, i pleaded with sayagy u ba than to let the
institutes of medicine to have their own master courses individually
befitting a university. it
was then agreed upon to allow institutes
of medicine to have their own postgraduate courses for master's
degrees, but the combined basic sciences courses were offerred only
in yangon at first, but later given in mandalay too.
dr khin maung win belonged to the batch of earlier basic medical
sciences course given in yangon and eventually he was one of my
students in that course.later, his wife dr khin lay yee attended the
master of science in anatomy course at IM2 and we became fast
friends.both husband and wife are congenial, obliging and
generous.they treated my writer-friends like aung-pyeyt free of
chrage when dr khin maung win opened a private clinic in yangon.they
have to struggle a lot.they have been through the great fire in
mandalay.they were fire victims, having lost every thing in that
great mandalay fire and had to live with friends for some time.they
lived in a fourth floor room in china town in rangoon for some time
until their practice took up.yes, dr khin maung win also has been
working hard to get his master of medical science in medicine in
rangoon and mandalay, then to get an MRCP in the UK and afterwards
to get a ward.
he was at first appointed as an assistant to dr khin maung tin, the
liver specialist or hepatologist.dr khin maung tin was at that time
a director in the department of medical research and was given half
of a ward in RGh to treat the patients with liver diseases.when he
dies dr khin maung win was given his post and later appointed as
professor as the liver ward was enlarged to become a separate
department. it's his luck
that burma has so many patients with liver
diseases, the more so with the increasing prevalence of the viral
hepatitis cases.and the numbers of cirrhosis caes are also rising.dr
khin maung win's ward and his private clinics are flooded
(overcrowded) with patients every day. it's
very difficult to see him
during the office hours.
out of this busy schedule, dr khin maung win succeeded in writing
health education articles that appear in the burmese periodicals
like "the health digest" and the kalyar magazine.he wrote in one
article that he is now writing about 6 or 7 articles each month.this
is in addition to health education books mainly on liver diseases at
every year or two's intervals.these publications are extra to his
involvement in the academic matters.he has been the chairman of the
society for the liver and gastrointestinal diseases, profesor of
hepatology teaching medical students and training other doctors plus
his occasional talks on the myanmar radio and TV programmes.he is
also regularly attending the international medical conferences in
singapore, malaysia, hongkong, europe and america.i marvel at his
pace for working so hard, yet so enthusiaticaly.he is now an
accomplished writer_physician!
most of his writings are on health matters.they are educative.but,
lately he has started writing on himself and his parents.he is
honest.he says he was an anyatha, born of middle-clas parents in
wintwin, a small town in meiktila district, central burma.his father
was a police officer, and his mother a semi-educated descendent of a
courtier of the famed su-pya-ya-lat of the mandalay regal period. he
writes adoringly of his mother more so than for his father.both his
parents are now deceased.
he is married to a petite,but polite and popular lady, dr khin lay
yee, a postgarduate student of mine.i am sure she gives him full
support for his endevours in both the medical as well as in the
literary worlds.