HISTORY
U Hla Tun
CPA, DHL, EPSF (Class I), EPFA (Class I)
Founder and Benefactor
U Hla Tun Hospice (Cancer) Foundation
1922-2006
Born in Mandalay on December 20th, 1922. Third child of Construction Engineer (U Hla Pe and Daw Saw). Matriculated in 1940 with distinctions in mathematics and additional mathematics from Saint Peter’s High School, Mandalay. Mandalay College 1940-42, Intermediate of Science (final) when the war broke out. First places in academic and athletic fields. Selected Soccer XI, Upper Myanmar.
In 1948 trained with Allan Charlesworth Company, the largest British firm of Chartered Accountants since 1911. In 1952 took first place at Registered Accountant Examination. In 1960 took over the English firm and renamed it ”U Hla Tun Group”, Certified Public Accountants and Financial Consultants. It is a large practice spreading over 50 years to date, which include elite clients viz the Union Bank of Burma, Government Boards/ Corporations, State Joint Venture Corporations, Union of Myanmar Economic Holding Large Banks, International Oil Companies such as Total FinaElf, Premier Petroleum, Petronas, Unocal, PTTEP, and Nippon Oil.
A diplomat, 1983 to 1997, Honorary Consul-General both the Kingdoms of Sweden and Netherlands, awarded Knighthood by Queen Beatrice of the Netherlands. In 1999 and 2001 Independence Day Honours List was awarded medal for ”Excellent Performance in Social Field (Class 1) and Excellent Performance in the Field of Arts (Class 1)”.
In 1998 founded the U Hla Tun Hospice (Cancer) Foundation, in memory of his only daughter who passed away with Leukemia in the United Kingdom. In Year 2000, Yangon Hospice 40 beds In-patient Centre was successfully opened and in year 2003 Mandalay Hospice (a replica of Yangon) 40 beds In-patient Centre was opened. In 2006, November 26, he was peacefully passed away with Heart and Kidney failure at Shwegondine Specialist Centre, Yangon.
Milestones of our Hospices
David O. Abel
Former Chairman(2006,Nov -> 2019,Jan)
(Minister / Brigadier General, Retired)
The Republic of The Union of Myanmar
David O Abel is the 4th sibling of 12 children. His father Mr. Alfred T Abel was an engineer in the Burma Railways and his mother Daw Chai a senior school teacher. The roots of family are of Pyin-Oo-Lwin (Maymyo), than the Northern Shan State. He was born in 1935 at Insein as his father was stationed there. During the Secon Second World War the family return to their native town Maymyo. He was educated in the Catholic Missionary School, Saint Albert’s in Maymyo and matriculated in 1951. He attended the Mandalay College to study Medicine for (2) years. Due to the internal insurgency he had to leave the College. He was selected to attend the Royal Military Academy, Sand Hurst in the United Kingdom from 1953 to 1956 and graduated in Economics. He served in the Myanmar Army in various positions and retired from the Army with the rank of Brigadier General holding the post of Director General of Procurement until 1991. He also served in the Civil Administration in various Government Departments. He was appointed to serve as Minister of Commerce, Minister of Finance and Revenue, Minister of National Planning and Economic Development and Minister at the Chairman’s affair of the State Peace and Development Council. He retired in 2003. During his cabinet positions he founded the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, and (12) Joint Venture Companies. He served as Chairman of the Myanmar Investment Commission until 1997.
For his outstanding services both in the Armed Forces and the Civil Administration Sector he was awarded seventeen decorations. His association with the Founder and Patron of Hospice Myanmar dates back to 1951. They were very close friends and worked very closely. This bond of friendship lasted for over 40 years, until U Hla Tun passed away. He married Majr Daw Khin Thein Mu, in 1970. They have no children.
This Forward is a message of Tribute to the Late U Hla Tun, CPA, DHL, EPSF (Class 1), Founder of Hospices in Myanmar. He was a Grand – old – man, loved and respected by whoever came in contact with him. He was a Philanthropist who strongly believed in caring and sharing with humanity. His philosophy was that “Life is a Journey of Humanity” and he stood – up for the poor irrespective of race or religion.
Today we have two Palliative Care Hospice Centers, one at Yangon and the other at Mandalay. Both can cater for fifty patients who are looked after with love and tenderness, when they finally fade away, they fade away with dignity and respect.
This endowment we carry on with dedication and undeterred love.
Our memory is always kept alive by the very remembrance of the “Grand – old – man”
U Hla Tun. He shall always be remembered and respected.
Chairman
Brigadier General David. O. Abel (Retd.)
Prof. Dr. Myo Nyunt
Current Chairman(2019,Jan -> To Date)
M.B.B.S, D.Path (Ygn),
D.C.P (Lond) M.Phil (Lond)
F.A.C.T.M (Aust) Ph.D
I have the honour of knowing Sayagyi U Hla Tun when his only daughter Daw Mya Sandar Tun came to me for haematological investigation and was diagnosed as a case of leukaemia. Sayagyi did everthing he possibly could to save her life including bone marrow transplant in United Kingdom. Unfortunately we lost her.Sayagyi was very much saddened but with his unwaivering determination he managed to overcome his grief and established the U Hla Tun Hospice (Cancer) Foundation.
Since the very beginning of this project we went to see the poorest of the poor cancer patients wherever they may be. I had the privilege to see them together with Sayagyi amounting to two thousand four hundred visits before the in-patient care centre was officially opened on 2nd September 2000 in Yangon Subsequently another Hospice was opened in Mandalay on 15th August 2003.Now we are trying to cater for these patients including extended palliative treatment. I am also trying very best to see that this noble work is carried on with dedication and enthusiasm, now under the guidance of D.O.Abel (Brig.Gen.Retd) All of us are working towards the best possible end of life care for every patient who are the focus of heart of end of-life care. My grateful thanks goes to all those who have contributed their energy, commitment loyalty and support.
Prof.Dr.Myo Nyunt
Chairman
M.B.B.S, D.Path (Ygn),
D.C.P (Lond.) M.Phil (Lond.)
F.A.C.T.M (Aust.) Ph.D
Daw Yi Yi Myint
VICE CHAIRMAN
B. Com (Hons),
MBA (Stanford, U.S.A)
ျမန္မာ့ပထမဆံုး Hospice
သိပ္မၾကာေသးတဲ့ (၆.၇.၁၉) စေနေန့မွာ အစည္းအေ၀းတက္ေရာက္ဖို႔ ကားနဲ့တစ္နာရီနီးပါး သြားရတဲ့ “ ဦးလွထြန္း Hospice (Cancer) ေဖာင္ေဒးရွင္း” ကိုေရာက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဧည့္ခန္းထဲေရာက္လိုက္တာနဲ့ ခါတိုင္းေတြ႔ၿမဲျဖစ္တဲ့ ကြယ္လြန္သူ ဂရုဏာရွင္ တည္ေထာင္သူဦးလွထြန္းရဲ့ ဓါတ္ပံုႀကီးအျပင္ ဆရာႀကီးဦးလွထြန္းနဲ့ထပ္တူထပ္မွ် ဦးလွထြန္းကင္ဆာေဖာင္ေဒးရွင္းႀကီးကို ခိုင္ခိုင္ၿမဲၿမဲ ထိန္းသိမ္းဦးေဆာင္ခဲ့တဲ့ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ဧဘယ္လ္ လတ္တေလာကြယ္လြန္သြားခဲ့ၿပီး ယခုခ်ိတ္ဆြဲထားတဲ့ ဓါတ္ပံုကိုျမင္လိုက္ရေတာ့ တကယ္ပဲ ဦးလွထြန္းကိုယ္စားျဖစ္ခဲ့သူပါမရွိေတာ့တဲ့ အေျခအေနကို ေလးေလးနက္နက္ ခံစားစဥ္းစားစရာေတြ ေပၚေပါက္လာပါတယ္။
ဒီေနရာမွာ အထူးသျဖင့္ ဆက္ၿပီးအစည္းအေ၀းကိုေရာက္လာၾကတဲ့ ကို္ယ္စားျပဳၾကရမယ့္သူေတြဟာ ကိုယ့္အသက္ (၈၀) ေက်ာ္ထက္ႀကီးတဲ့ ဦးလွထြန္းရဲ့တြဲဖက္ က်န္ရွိခဲ့တဲ့ မိတ္ေဆြႀကီးေတြျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဦးလွထြန္းရဲ့လက္ေရြးစဥ္ေတြရွိေနၾကေသးတဲ့ တစ္ခ်ိဳ႕ပါပဲ။ ဆရာႀကီးရဲ့လုပ္ရည္ကိုင္ရည္နဲ့ တိုင္းဆမမွီနိုင္တဲ့ ေမတၱာရွင္ရဲ့ Hospiceကို ႏိုင္သေလာက္လက္တြဲခဲ့ၾကတယ္။ ဆက္ၿပီးလည္း သြားၾကမယ့္သူေတြပါ။ Next Generation အျဖစ္ ေဆြးမ်ိဳးေရာ ေဆြမ်ိဳးမဟုတ္တဲ့တာ၀န္ကို ဆက္ယူရမယ့္သူေတြကို ရည္စူးၿပီး ကိုယ္တိုင္သိထားမွတ္ထားဒါေလးေတြ တင္ျပခ်င္ပါတယ္။ Hospice ဆိုတဲ့ေ၀ါဟာရကို တိတိက်က်သိႏိုင္ဖို႕ အဓိပၸါယ္ကိုရွာမယ္ဆိုရင္ ထင္သေလာက္မလြယ္ပါဘူး။ အဘဓာန္အခ်ိဳ႕မွာေတာင္ မပါပါဘူး။ အခ်ိဳ႕ကို တင္ျပပါ့မယ္။
(၁)Hospice – Traveler’ house of nest by religious order
Collins Current English Dictionary
(၂) Hospice – House of nest or travelers especially kept by religious order, Home for the destitute
Oxford Dictionary
(၃) ခရီးသည္မ်ားတည္းခိုရန္ေဂဟာ – ဇရပ္၊ နာမက်န္းသူဆင္းရဲသူမ်ားအတြက္ ေဂဟာ၊ ေမတၱာရိပ္မြန္၊ ေသေန႔ေစာင့္ေနသူမ်ားအတြက္ ဂရုဏာေဂဟာ။
ျမန္မာအဘိဓာန္
နိဂံုးခ်ဳပ္အေနနဲ႔ ျဖည့္ေျပာရမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ ျမန္မာ Hospice က ေမတၱာ၊ ဂရုဏာေတြနဲ႔ စရိတ္စကမရွိ ေစာင့္ေရွာက္သြားတဲ့ ဘာသာေရးအဖြဲ႕အစည္း မဟုတ္တဲ့ ေမတၱာေဂဟာပါ။ ဂရုဏာနဲ႔မွ ေပၚေပါက္တာပါ။ Palliative care ဆိုတာကေတာ့ ဘ၀ရဲ႕ေနာက္ဆံုးအခ်ိန္မွာ ခံစားမႈေ၀ဒနာကို ဂရုဏာ၊ ၾကင္နာမႈေပးတာပါ။
အဂၤလိပ္စာဘာသာျပန္ေတြမွာ Hospice ရဲ႕အစကို ေရခဲေတာင္ေပၚက ခရီးသည္ေတြက္ို ဘာသာေရးရိပ္သာမ်ားက ျပဳစုေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေပးခဲ့တဲ့ အေတြ႕အႀကံဳမ်ားက ျဖစ္ေပၚလာခဲ့တဲ့အတြက္ ျဖစ္ေပၚလာခဲ့အတြက္ ေရခဲေတာင္ေပၚခရီးသည္မ်ားကို ဘာသာေရးရိပ္သာမ်ားက စခဲ့တဲ့အတြက္ အဲဒီကိစၥက အဓိကျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ဆရာႀကီးဦးလွထြန္းရဲ႕ ျမန္မာ Hospiceကေတာ့ ဘ၀ခရီးရဲ႕ေနာက္ဆံုးအခ်ိန္ေရာက္ၾကတဲ့ ကင္ဆာေရာဂါသည္မ်ားကို Hospice မွာေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ အိမ္သို႔ျပန္ေခါင္းခ်ခ်င္ရင္လည္း ေရာက္တဲ့အထိ တာ၀န္ယူေစာင့္ေရွာက္ပါတယ္။ အနားမွာ မိသားစုအေစာင့္နဲ႔ ေနခ်င္တယ္ဆိုလည္းရပါတယ္။ ေန႔ရက္ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္မရွိ၊ စရိတ္ေပးဖို႔မလို၊ ဘာသာေရးကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္မရွိ မိမိတို႔ရဲ့အဆံုးကို ၿငိမ္းေအးစြာ သြားလို႔ရပါတယ္။
ဘာသာေရး၊ ဘ႑ာေရး၊ မိသားစုပါခြင့္ကိုပါ ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္မရွိတဲ့ ျမန္မာ Hospice ပံုရိပ္ဟာ စီမံခန္႔ခြဲမႈရႈေဒါင့္ကၾကည့္ရင္ေတာ့ ေတာ္ေတာ္ႀကီးဂရုဏာ၊ ေစတနာ၊ ေမတၱာတြင္မက ညိွႏႈိင္းေပါင္းစပ္ယူရတာမ်ားပါတယ္။ ဒီဟာကိုသက္၀င္နားလည္တဲ့ ဆရာႀကီးဟာ ပထမဆံုးထူေထာင္ခဲ့တဲ့ျမန္မာအတြက္ Hospice ကို သူခ်စ္တဲ့ခငိတဲ့ေလးစားတဲ့မိတ္ေဆြ၊ ေဆြမ်ိဳးေတြရယ္၊ လက္ေရြးစဥ္တပည့္ေက်ာ္ႀကီးကို ဖိတ္ေခၚလက္ကမ္းၿပီးလုပ္ခဲ့တာ အခုဆိုႏွစ္ေပါင္း(၂၀) ေက်ာ္ခဲ့ပါၿပီ။ ဒါအျပင္ သတိထားမိတာကကေတာ့ မူလလက္တြဲခဲ့ၾကသူမ်ားရဲ႕ အခ်ိန္ဟာလဲမ်ားမ်ားမၾကာေတာ့ဟု ဆိုႏိုင္ပါတယ္။
ရွိေနေသးတဲ့သူေတြရယ္၊ ပါ၀င္လာတဲ့ဆရာႀကီးရဲ႕တပည့္မ်ားနဲ႔ ဆရာႀကီးရဲ႕ေဆြမ်ိဳး၊ မိသားစုေတြရယ္ ပိုမိုစိုက္ထုတ္အင္အားေတြနဲ႕ ဘ၀ခရီးဧည့္သည္၊ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြရဲ႕ ခိုကိုးရာကို ေကာင္းသထက္ေကာင္းေအာင္ လုပ္ၾကပါစို႔လို႔ ဆုေတာင္းေမတၱာ ပို႕ပါတယ္။