Myint Myint Khin (, ; 15 December 1923 – 19 June 2014) was a Burmese medical professor and writer. An English major at the University of Rangoon, she was the chair of the Department of Medicine of the Institute of Medicine, Mandalay from 1965 to 1984, and served as a consultant at the World Health Organization from 1985 to 1991. Her literary career began in 1996, spurred on by the HIV/AIDS crisis in the country. She published 11 books in Burmese and two in English. At the time of her death, the former professor was collaborating on an English language book on the history of medical education in the country.
Most of her books dealt with public health and medicine. One notable exception was her last published book in 2013, Poetry for Me, a collection of her English language poetry, which she began working on after the death of her husband Dr. San Baw, a hip replacement pioneer, in 1984. Through her books and interviews, she advocated for more openness and transparency in the country, and spoke out about the regression of women's rights in Myanmar. In 2012, she founded a daycare center for elderly physicians in Yangon.
Early life and education
Myint Myint Khin was born on 15 December 1923 in Bassein (Pathein), in the Irrawaddy delta in British Burma. The oldest of three siblings, she grew up in the nearby delta town of Henzada (Hinthada), before moving to Rangoon (Yangon) as a teenager. She was not yet 15 when she enrolled at the University of Rangoon in 1938 to study English literature, and there she became "obsessed" by the works of poet John Donne.
However, her studies were interrupted by the arrival of World War II in 1941. In a 2013 interview, she said that the war years were a time of "tremendous adversity" and "anguish" during which she lost her mother and brother, and her family lost their property. Her brother was killed by a bomb, and she had to go and retrieve her dead brother's body. Furthermore, the loss of property caused "fears and insecurities in the aftermath of World War II".
Yet it was also the war that got her into medicine. With all the colleges in the country shut down, she enrolled at the only university level school opened during the Japanese occupation: the wartime medical school founded by Drs. Ba Than, S. Sen and Yin May in 1943. After the war, she completed her original major, receiving a BA in English literature in 1946, and then promptly continued her medical education at the just reopened Faculty of Medicine, graduating with an MBBS in 1950.
Medical career
Early years
Though Myint Myint Khin got into medicine by happenstance, she excelled at it. After starting out as a staff physician (Civil Assistant Surgeon) at Rangoon General Hospital in 1950, she did her residency at the University of Pennsylvania medical school, and received an MD in 1955. She graduated ahead of her husband San Baw, the medical school classmate she married in 1953 who received an MD and an MS in 1958, also from Penn Medicine. Meanwhile, she finished her training abroad by getting her FRCP from the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
Mandalay years
Back in Burma, she was appointed Clinical Professor of Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of Mandalay University in 1960, joining her husband who had been chief of orthopedic surgery at Mandalay General Hospital since 1957. In 1965, she was promoted to be the head of the Department of Medicine, becoming the first woman chair at the school. According to a 1967 BMJ article, she was the only female head of Department of Medicine in the country's three medical schools at the time.
She was widely respected by her colleagues and her students. According to Prof. Myint Myint Aye, the retired head of the Department of Medicine at the Institute of Medicine, Mandalay (1987–1990), her elder colleague was "widely respected for her excellent lectures and informative clinical bedside teachings", and "she recruited young graduates with promising potential and built the strongest department of medicine in Burma which produced hundreds and thousands of doctors meeting the international standard. These doctors are now not only serving Burma, but all over the world.” She is remembered as an inspirational and "towering figure" by her students, who affectionately called her "Mummy Gyi" ("elder mummy"), while Prof. Myint Myint Aye was known as "Mummy Lay" ("younger mummy".) Myint Myint Khin's description of herself was harsher: a demanding professor who could come across as "aggressive" and "abrasive".