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From 1985-1992 she served as a consultant to the World Health Organization (Southeast Asia).

 

Apart from her book on HIV/AIDS, she has written works on cancer, smoking and Burmese traditional food and nutrition. She continues to write on health-related issues for several magazines and journals in Burma.

 

Social Service________________________________

Than Myint Aung

 

Apart from being an award-winning writer of short stories, Than Myint Aung is a tireless organizer of social programs to help Burma’s poor, sick and underprivileged. In fact, the two facets of her full life are so intertwined that her stories usually center on parahita (altruism), or providing welfare for the less fortunate.

 

“I am devoted to working for the welfare of others in the committee for helping social affairs,” she says. “My short stories are mostly based on social welfare work and real characters in human society.”

 

A collection of these stories, translated as Mass Without Form, won the National Literary Award in 2003. She attributed much of the success of the work to her experiences in welfare work.

 

Her writing isn’t confined to fiction—among her publications is one on the prevention of HIV/AIDS. Her social work involves the welfare of orphans, psychiatric hospital therapy research, and leprosy treatment.

 

Than Myint Aung’s most unusual social welfare activity, however, is her work as information officer of the Free Funeral Services Society (FFSS), founded four years ago in Rangoon to assist people who cannot afford funerals for their family members.