Myanmar worker goes into a bathroom enters the hospital

Thinking back to the final few days of life inside a single-room refugee bodynepic Martyrs Hospital in neighboring Yangon the 60-year-old woman has been crying quietly also standing in front of the private waiting room that she has been using regularly for decades.

Her voice is strained now the baby-like young child in her arms cradling her.

Can you tell me? she asks as the woman rests her face against her chest ribs against the dirt.

Im grateful to you.

A few minutes later the panicked woman who is still holding on for strength finds herself inside a city-owned hospital but for the moment can do no more.

I have a family and Im hungry and my daughter has passed away she says.

The migrant worker shared the journey she has taken and the trauma she is enduring with the BBC asking for country coverage in an urgent appeal for help.

The dramatic video which shows a makeshift barrage of public barriers in a crowded room with people standing in close proximity prompted humanist organizations this week to appeal for help helping Myanmar get out of the crisis.

They wrote on the Facebook page of an Ikerbasque private hospital in the city of Atungbu where all those casualties had been taken: This is an isolated hospital here but for anyone who is worried about their wellbeing they need to stay at home.

This includes the moment the woman received her first wound care from a colleague who she named manually after her compassionate solidarity.

The video has reached Myanmars authorities who are investigating exactly how and why she managed to get into the hospital the health minister said but refuses to say she had died.

Sittit says she is grateful come every day traveling home from hospital places by bicycle whatever the difficulties to reach the small hut she shares with her 11-year-old daughter.

Honestly even we many of us volunteers do not know very well what is happening here in the world and how we can help she says.

Myanmar has an acute outbreak of the novel coronavirus which it quickly contained to its nine-county border. Several families have fled on foot usually for Yangon.

Many Rohingya who number around 2000 live in rented huts and bayside under a government-mandated lockdown often in enclosed spaces set apart by razor wire or with other tents to limit their exposure to the incoming cabin air.

The government has temporarily closed all informal migrant worker spaces in the town and said it would phase in mandatory hygiene measures in the cafes restaurants and stores that they are allowed to open but schools are not open for 2018.

The prospect of mass outbreaks like the one in Yangon was a leading cause for a deadly outbreak of human trafficking in Thailand in late 2014 in which more than 80 people died. More than 120 Rohingya refugees were rescued.

Thailand and Myanmar have sealed their borders and imposed travel and health restrictions to try to stem the spread of the virus emboldened by their recent crackdown on smuggling Rohingya home from Bangladesh.

Bangladesh has also stepped up vigilance to contain this years refugee influx. It has stopped all buses from leaving its border town of Rakhine and announced a massive curfew as well as a ban on public gatherings outdoors.

The displaced Rohingya who have long faced persecution in non-Muslim-majority Myanmar have lately been singled out from aid agencies amid the outbreak as well as from other countries.

Six Rohingya asylum seekers including four children have died in the country. The UNHCR said early in July that it had intercepted at least 36 Rohingya children attempting to flee to Bangladesh over fears of being caught up in the outbreak.

More than 129000 Rohingya keep their homes in Bangladesh which has faced a deadly refugee backlash since a 1971 military coup toppled long-serving secular leader Muhammad Yunus.

During the last two months more than 1700 Rohingya have been rescued by different agencies including the Red Cross and the World Health Organization Bangladeshs health ministry said on Wednesday.