In my work at the Mae Tao clinic, which treats 100,000 patients from Burma each year, I see daily the tragic results of the regime's brutality: amputees from landmine injuries, patients with emergency obstetric complications, patients with HIV and late-stage tuberculosis.

Then there are the babies. The clinic averages five deliveries daily. Parents who cross the border from Burma lack Thai identification, so Thai authorities cannot issue birth certificates for their babies. As an alternative, the clinic has issued delivery certificates to more than 10,000 babies. But they are neither Burmese citizens nor Thai citizens; they are stateless. Many have no surviving family.

There's no question that a lack of health care isn't the worst of Burma's problems, but it is one of the most basic. Burma's rulers suppress basic freedoms of mobility, speech, and the press. Burma has no free elections or legislative processes. Over 1,000 political prisoners languish in jail with no access to medical treatment. The military forcibly recruits boys as young as 10 years old. Child soldiers who escape to Thailand find themselves orphaned, disowned by families, and beyond rehabilitation.

Most alarming, in a systematic effort to eliminate minority groups, the 400,000-strong military routinely commits human rights abuses among ethnic states in eastern Burma. Homes, crops, and entire villages have been destroyed. Thousands have been killed, over a million displaced.

In the 'Black Zones' of eastern Burma, backpack medics provide essential health care where international aid agencies cannot. Correlations between human rights violations and adverse health outcomes documented by backpack medics illustrate the effects of military misrule. Families forced to flee are 2.4 times more likely to have a child under 5 die. They are 3.1 times more likely to have a malnourished child. Families whose food or crops are destroyed are forced to search the jungle for sustenance. As a result, they are 4.6 times more likely to suffer a landmine injury.

A half-century of military misrule has left Burma's 50 million people living in a black hole. The world knows little of what goes on inside Burma, due to a carefully crafted Burmese military reign.

Only septuagenarians remember the time--before the 1962 military coup--when Burma was the rice bowl of Asia, home to the most erudite class among Southeast Asians. New generations must rely on textbooks to know the beauty that once was Burma. Textbooks fail to mention the Burmese heroes who have opposed military abuses and struggled for democracy. People are even forbidden from speaking openly about democracy in public.

For three decades the military rulers closed Burma to foreign investment. As a result, Burma remained frozen in time while the world progressed around its borders. A once-wealthy nation became one of the world's poorest.

Today the Orwellian regime controls virtually every aspect of life. Their agents listen to telephone calls and watch individual movement-even from one village to the next. "News" media only promote military propaganda.

The Burmese have risked their lives countless times to draw the world's attention to their plight, most recently in the country's 'Saffron Revolution' last fall. It is time we responded to their plight.

First, governments and media around the world should shine a bright light on what has been happening there. Absent a major crisis, such as the cyclone that devastated the country in May, Burma seldom receives notice.

Next, Burma is a signatory to numerous UN conventions - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The generals violate them regularly. The UN should pursue every enforcement mechanism at its disposal to hold the regime accountable for its abuses, and to give support and hope to citizens trying to effect change from within.

We must also scrutinize outsiders who prop up the regime. In the early 1990s Burma's generals, to enhance their own power and wealth, opened the doors to foreign investment. Several Asian nations now do business with Burma -- China to obtain natural gas and timber, India and Russia to sell arms. Burma mines precious gems, including about 90% of the world's rubies, some of which still find their way onto world markets. While most U.S. companies no longer deal with Burma, Chevron continues to invest there.

Thailand, home to 150,000 refugees and 2 million undocumented immigrants, is the largest importer of Burmese goods. Thailand also invests in dams to exploit the potential for hydroelectricity.

The U.S. and many other nations have imposed economic sanctions on Burma, and those should continue with smart targets. But as long as Burma's neighbors keep doing business with the generals, they will likely remain in power.

Finally, the world's nations should intensify pressure to allow international aid agencies access to areas in Burma where people continue to suffer deprivation, not only from the cyclone but from the government's own policies. Aid is currently not allowed where the government does not want to the world to see what's happening. According to the military, there are no displaced people; refugees do not exist.

Burma has given the world many courageous people. Aung San Suu Kyi, whose pro-democracy party won a rare free election in Burma in 1990, today remains the world's only Nobel Peace Prize laureate in prison.

Thousands of red-robed Buddhist monks marched for freedom in a Saffron Revolution last fall, to be met by tear gas and guns. In 1988, thousands of students were massacred in the streets of Rangoon while making a nonviolent plea for democratic reform.

Dr. Cynthia Maung, a physician from Burma, fled her native land in 1988 and founded the Mae Tao Clinic. Known to some the Mother Theresa of Burma , "Dr. Cynthia" (as the community knows this humble woman) has won numerous international awards, including a 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Her clinic does amazing things with limited resources.

A light shines from those who struggle for the right to live in peace - a notion nonexistent in Burma for so long most would not know how to define it. In the face of these brave witnesses, the world cannot remain silent. As Aung San Suu Kyi urges the world's free nations, "Please use your liberty to promote ours."