Empowering clinicians to address the global challenge of trauma: an example from Myanmar

No one had thought to resuscitate him; shocked, hypoxic and drowsy as he was. This Myanmar Delta fisherman had been left alone with his obstructed airway and bleeding, bilateral compound femoral fractures. Hours earlier, he’d fallen from his boat and under the blades of the outboard motor. Dragged out of the water by his comrades, he didn’t receive any first aid and the local clinic care was woefully inadequate. Even at the national trauma hospital in Yangon, the fisherman lay unattended and neglected in the emergency receiving area.