This week marks five years since the start of the coup in Myanmar, which brought an end to a decade of fragile development and plunged a country of fifty-five million people into a brutal civil conflict. On this dark anniversary I wanted to share an incredible story of light. A story of incredible human resilience, fortitude and adaptation. The story of the Phoenix nurses.
Many of us may not know very much about Myanmar and how its health care and nursing staff relate to us here in the UK. But Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a former British colony. Myanmar sits uncomfortably close to our own history, even if it rarely features in our public debate.
Myanmar’s nurses have historically been held in high regard. The country’s only civilian leader , is the daughter of a nurse. Suu Kyi’s legacy is like her country – complex. The years before the coup included appalling state-orchestrated killing in Rakhine against the Rohingya population by the military who still wielded enormous power.
There was also meaningful progress elsewhere, including development of the country’s long and proud nursing tradition. That progress was fragile, uneven, and incomplete, but nonetheless impressive.
Prior to the coup, nursing education was expanding, professional standards were strengthening, and links with international partners were slowly growing. However since the 2021 coup, Myanmar has served as a tragic exemplar of what happens when a state turns on its own health system. In the days after the military seized power, nurses and other health workers were faced with a stark choice: comply with the military junta’s orders or rise and resist.
In overwhelming numbers, nurses joined doctors, lawyers, teachers, and students in a nationwide civil disobedience movement. This was not a symbolic protest. Refusing to work in militarised hospitals meant arrest, disappearance, or worse. Hundreds of health workers were killed or imprisoned. Hospitals were occupied, professional councils dismantled, and nursing education largely shut down. The aim was clear: to break the professions that underpin civilian life.
That’s why we have today published a joint statement with the BMA reiterating the need to respect the principle of medical neutrality, and calling for an end to attacks on health care workers, medical infrastructure, patients, and civilians.
However in the face of such violent oppression, nursing care in Myanmar did not stop. It moved underground. From that day to the present, it has been largely delivered by nurses working in hiding, in conflict-affected regions, and in informal clinics. A vast parallel health system has emerged in the face of threat from the junta, stitched together with limited resources, improvised facilities, and extraordinary personal risk.
Throughout this period, the 天美传媒 has worked to support an extraordinary group of hundreds of Myanmar nurses who have continued to care for patients and educate the next generation of student nurses, despite being criminalised for doing so. The RCN’s support for these nurses has been practical rather than rhetorical: we have provided education, clinical advice, and access to evidence and technical support through our members.
In a genuinely international effort, the RCN convened a large group of nursing academics to work alongside Myanmar nurse educators to design and deliver a full undergraduate nursing degree. The result was the Phoenix Bachelor of Nursing Science, the first nursing degree of its kind to be developed and delivered entirely within a conflict setting.
The lesson, drawn in part from COVID, is simple: an expert does not need to be in the room to teach students. But nursing is inherently practical, so distance learning alone is insufficient. The Phoenix degree, therefore, combines recorded lectures, local Burmese classroom facilitators, and supervised clinical practice undertaken in jungle hospitals, pop-up clinics, and internally displaced people’s camps.
Students complete exams, written assignments, and portfolios of practice, supported by access to the RCN library and ongoing academic support from RCN members, staff and others. They face the same academic pressures as student nurses anywhere—deadlines, assessments, competency sign-off—layered on top of risks that most students will never encounter. Phoenix nursing students have studied in near darkness to avoid drone attacks, cared for victims of war, and more than once evacuated deep into the jungle when fighting moved too close to their classrooms.
The undertaking has been substantial. Alongside others, the RCN has been part of a group that has delivered 58 modules and recorded 2,100 hours of teaching, while local experts have supported students with 1,500 hours of clinical practice. All of this has totalled 3,600 hours of training over three years. The degree is aligned with the International Council of Nurses standards and Myanmar’s pre-coup nursing curriculum, preserving nursing quality amid the junta’s attempts, at every stage, to disrupt it.
In the coming weeks, the first 21 students will graduate. Their achievement is remarkable—but they are only the beginning. Across Myanmar, the Phoenix programme has already enrolled more than 100 students. It stands as a vital reminder that nursing is a powerful expression of humanitarianism.
In the darkest corners of our world there is light and often that light is held, figuratively and literally, by a nurse, and nowhere is that truer than in Myanmar.
To find out more about the RCN’s work supporting nurses in conflict please visit the RCN International Academy webpage or read our Care amongst the chaos report which features exclusive case studies on nurses working in conflict zones, including in Myanmar.
