A WANTAGE doctor is fighting to raise awareness of the plight of people in troubled Burma.Dr Phillip Ambler, who lives in Charlton, and is a doctor at Wantage Health Centre, has spent 18 years helping refugees and political dissidents on the Thai/Burmese border. He hopes to return to the area next month. The GP is a trustee of Karen Aid, a group set up to assist Burma's ethnic minority Karen people - who have borne the brunt of decades of brutal oppression.
The Karen people have been at the forefront of efforts to fight Burma's brutal military regime, though thousands have been driven into Thailand as a result - often after having their homes and villages destroyed by the Burmese army.
Dr Ambler works to support a clinic just inside Thailand which treats those forced out of Burma - often after braving malarial jungles, minefields, plus torture, attack and rape by the military. Money pays for medicines, eye care, educational projects and teacher training.
He said: "Over the past 18 years, I have seen a worsening of atrocities against the refugees we are treating, and an increase of terrible deprivation within Burma.
"I was in Rangoon three years ago, and it was clear there is desperate poverty for an awful lot of the population.
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