Naga Thein Hlaing
နာဂသိန်းလှိုင်
Naga Thein Hlaing in 2012
Born
Thein Hlaing

(1933-11-03)3 November 1933
Thaton, Tenasserim Division, Burma (modern-day Mon State, Myanmar)
Died10 August 2021(2021-08-10) (aged 87)
Yangon, Myanmar
Resting placeYay Way Cemetery, Yangon
Other namesEdward Thompson Hoke Wang, Shwe Darr Bo
CitizenshipBurmese
Alma materUniversity of Medicine 1, Yangon
OccupationSurgeon
Years active1962–1988

Thein Hlaing (Burmese: သိန်းလှိုင်; also Edward Thompson Hoke Wang;[1] 3 November 1933 – 10 August 2021), known honorifically as Naga Thein Hlaing (Burmese: နာဂသိန်းလှိုင်, pronounced [nàga̰ θéɪɰ̃ l̥àɪɰ̃]), was a Burmese surgeon. He was well known for his performance of endocrine surgery in the Naga Hills of northwestern Burma, using local anesthetic only.[2] Since he was able to cure goitre, which local shamans could not do, Thein Hlaing was recognized by the local residents as Naga Nat (God of Naga) and was worshiped as a deity.[3][4]

Naga Thein Hlaing is highly respected among Burmese doctors.[5] His life story is still part of popular Burmese medical history, in which he is portrayed as a heroic figure.[6]

Early life and education

Thein Hlaing was born in 1933[7] in Thaton, Mon State to a family of Chinese descent.[8] His father wanted him to take over the family business and become a merchant, but Thein Hlaing instead chose medicine. He graduated with a MBBS degree from the University of Medicine 1, Yangon.[9]

Career

During his university years, Thein Hlaing served as a general secretary of the Medical College Students' Union in 1957 and of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) in 1960.[8] During his internship as a surgeon, Thein Hlaing led a strike against the government for paying interns at a low rate in public hospitals.[10]

He worked as an assistant doctor in Myeik Township in 1962.[8] From 1965 to 1971, Thein Hlaing was sent as a surgeon to Sinklaing Hkamti, a town of the Naga Hills, in Sagaing Region.[9]

At that time, about 70% of the population in the Naga Hills suffered from goitre. He operated on patients with goitre and other surgical conditions common in the region. He faced many difficulties and had to educate and persuade the Naga people, who did not want to accept surgery. In order to gain their cooperation, he pledged his life on his work.[11]

Without adequate surgical instruments, Thein Hlaing operated to alleviate thyroid disease, a common condition in the area, performing surgery even under trees or outside huts.[9] Winning over local people who had formerly relied on spirits to cure their diseases, he became known as the God of Naga.[3]

According to him, the total number of patients who underwent local anesthesia was 2,895 in the 47-year period from 2009 until his retirement. No one had died while he was operating.[10]

Later life

Thein Hlaing retired as a government employee on 30 April 1988, without receiving a pension.[8] On 15 January 2020, at the Naga New Year Day ceremony, he was given the certificate of honour by the Leading Body of the Naga Self-Administered Zone for his contributions to the Naga people.[12][11]

He died on 10 August 2021, at the age of 87, in Yangon.[3]

Naga Thein Hlaing is a protagonist in the 2016 novel The Sweet Honey Drop on the Sharp Scalpel Blade by Nyi Pu Lay.[13] The book won the National Literature Award for Fiction in 2017.[10]

Writer Kyaw Kyaw Win stated that "Dr. Naga Thein Hlaing is the only doctor who can operate on the goitre with local anesthesia in the history of the world of medicine".[14]

References

  1. ↑ "စာရေးဆရာ ညီပုလေးရဲ့ ဝတ္ထု အင်္ဂလိပ်လို ဖတ်ရှုနိုင်ပြီ". The Irrawaddy. 10 October 2017. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  2. ↑ "Ambulatory Surgery by Dr Naga". sites.google.com. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 "၂၀၂၁ မြန်မာ စစ်အာဏာသိမ်း - ဆရာဝန်ကြီး ဒေါက်တာ နာဂသိန်းလှိုင် ကွယ်လွန်". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  4. ↑ Aung Myin Thu (4 May 2015). "သံသယပျောက်ပြီး အမှန်ဘဝရောက်ဖို့" (in Burmese). Tomorrow Journal. Retrieved 25 June 2016.
  5. ↑ "Doctor for peace". The Myanmar Times. 11 May 2018.
  6. ↑ "The adventures of the Myanmar surgeon in Congo". The Myanmar Times. 3 August 2018.
  7. ↑ "ခွဲစိတ်ကု ဆရာဝန်ကြီး ဒေါက်တာ နာဂ သိန်းလှိုင် ကွယ်လွန်". Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd (in Burmese). Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  8. 1 2 3 4 "ဝေးလံခေါင်ဖျားရာအရပ်တွင် လူသားအကျိုးပြုသူ ဆရာကြီး ဒေါက်တာနာဂသိန်းလှိုင် ကွယ်လွန်". Mizzima Myanmar News and Insight. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  9. 1 2 3 "The Naga patient". The Myanmar Times. 19 January 2018. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  10. 1 2 3 "ထက်မြက်တဲ့ဓားသွားပေါ်က ချိုမြမြပျားရည်စက် (သို့) နာဂတောင်တန်းက ဆရာဝန် သူရဲကောင်းအကြောင်း". The Myanmar Times. 31 January 2018. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  11. 1 2 "ထက်လွန်းတဲ့ဓား၊ ချိုလွန်းတဲ့ ပျားရည်". DVB (in Burmese). 14 April 2020.
  12. ↑ "နာဂဒေသ ခွဲစိတ်ဆရာဝန်ကြီး ဒေါက်တာသိန်းလှိုင် ကွယ်လွန်". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  13. ↑ "အနစ်နာခံတဲ့ ဆရာ၀န်အကြောင်း ဝတ္ထုရှည် စာပေဆု ဆွတ်ခူး ဆွတ်ခူး". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). Retrieved 10 August 2021.
  14. ↑ Okkar Ko Ko and Zwe Nyan (8 October 2014). "ရွှေဓားဗိုလ်၏ ဓားမှတ်တမ်း". 7Day News (in Burmese). အတွဲ ၁၃၊ အမှတ် ၃၁.
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