Mizzima had the opportunity to interview Israeli Ambassador Ronen Gilor following a productive Video Conference organized by the Israeli Embassy linking Israeli health professionals with their Myanmar counterparts to discuss how best to tackle the spread of the coronavirus or COVID-19 as it is called.

If we can start off, how do you view the Israeli authorities’ progress with dealing with this pandemic?

Yes, in Israel the pandemic, like all over the world, started already a couple of months ago. And immediately the Ministry of Health took the right position, according to the common view in Israel, together with the Prime Minister’s office, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Finance and other line Ministries of the government. In the beginning they dedicated some of the hospitals to be hospitals with special departments for the people who carry the virus, COVID-19. Actually, some new designated departments were built in some of those hospitals, some of those hospitals are mega hospitals. They are very big also if you compare it to other hospitals in the world. Like for example the Shiba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv, which has two thousand beds all together. So they actually established one department, new department for the COVID-19, and step by step, people were checked out, and now we have more than 12,000 positive cases in Israel, but many people recovered already and we have 140 people who died from the COVID-19, which is a bit more than one percent in Israel, which is, if you compare it to other countries, a good situation.

Now the people are very disciplined, they are in a closure right now, especially in those days of holidays, because we face the holidays also in Israel, the Passover, like we have the Thingyan in Myanmar.

Would you call it a success in terms of things so far, you haven’t quite hit the top of the hump, should we say, in terms of numbers, I would guess? Is it a success/ How do you view it?

Well, I am not sure I can judge if it was a success or not, but according to the professionals in Israel, they believe it is a success. The situation with COVID-19 is without precedent. So history is going to tell us whether we have been successful or not, whether we did it in the right way or not. In Israel, in China before, in the US, in Italy, in Myanmar, in Thailand, and other places, history is going to study it carefully. But let’s say that the common perspective now, according to the professionals, is that we are doing okay in Israel.

Still, in each country you have the challenges you can face in those situations, there are those communities that are more disciplined, other communities that are less disciplined, and you know it came all of a surprise for everybody, so it takes time for the people to get into the thing and to understand what they feel and what they are facing. And, you know, what they are talking about is balance between the health, public health, and the social economy of the country, of the people. And this balance between the economy and the health is a very, very delicate one. It is going to take a lot of time to get out of the situation. You know measures were done but we need to exit this situation, maybe today, tomorrow or in two months, or four months, but we need to get out of that in the very right way and this would be much more harder than the measures that are being taken now.

Yes, you mentioned something very important there, in other words, we do have this challenge with regards to the economy in all the countries that have been affected and how do you view that in Israel because obviously this is going to have a heavy impact, isn’t it, in terms of the economy?

That’s right, you know that in many countries, and Israel as well, and I am sure Myanmar as well, after I live in Myanmar and I follow up Myanmar very carefully and with a lot of interest. We have much more bigger numbers of unemployment. You know there was not this size of unemployment before, until we came into this era of the COVID-19 and unemployment and people who are losing their job or going to a vacation without being paid, this is one of the major challenges that we have.

For example in Myanmar, they were working so hard for the SMEs. SMEs are very important for the economy of the country and now the SMEs suffer. The factories, some factories were coming to be bigger than it was before and now they cannot continue with their activity. In Israel it is the same. People cannot gather together, cannot go to the factories, people are not going to their businesses. They are not going to their entertainment. And in Israel people used to go to so many shows and entertainment after work. And the business world is suffering as well. Many people cannot work to manufacture the best technology that Israel does for the world. People are not going to the ministries or the municipalities and they cannot take care of the things they have to take care of in the developed economy of Israel.

So it doesn’t matter is the economy is developed or developing, we are facing much of the same challenges and problems all over the world.

What do you think about that obviously there have been different approaches about how to tackle this virus and we have seen in South Korea, we have seen in Sweden, where they have had a more open approach, where they haven’t locked things down, they have done a lot to actually monitor, to test, and there is a sense that they may be on the right path, they may be getting over the hump. Is a total lockdown completely necessary?

You know it is a matter of decision making. Some of those countries succeeded, some of those countries we do not know whether they are going to be successful  or not. We saw the first decision making by countries like the UK, we saw what happened in Italy, we know what happened in Israel where the lockdown was very decisive. We know what happens in Myanmar that when the cases appeared, Myanmar decided to cancel Thingyan, this is rather a trauma for the Myanmar people and also for me, after I’ve experienced Thingyan last year, it was a fantastic festival of water, so much of happenings, people were so enthusiastic about the New Year. Now, nothing, no stages, no shows, no music, no water, and it is very, very hard, but people are disciplined, people know that they need to protect their health and life, with a closure. Nobody knows whether this or another decision is necessary as we talked before, for history is going to study it for us. And now I think that it is also a matter of cooperation, and I would like to tell you that I saw Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the State Counsellor, talking about cooperation between countries, which is going to be a very important key factor to get out of this COVID-19 era. Cooperation with ASEAN countries, cooperation with countries like China, Japan, Korea, other countries, and also cooperation with Israel, and Israel would like very much to cooperate with Myanmar and to dedicate attention to Myanmar and to bring experience to Myanmar.

Today, I believe that you know we did a special Video Conference between the Shiba Medical Centre of Israel, which is the biggest hospital in Israel, as I mentioned before, 2,000 beds, and the doctors, and professors, and leaders from Myanmar. From the Yangon Region, the Ministry of Health and Sports, the General Hospital of Yangon, private hospitals in Myanmar and Yangon, in Mandalay, the Myanmar Medical Association. Thirty people did participate in a Zoom meeting with three professors of the Shiba Medical Centre and we asked questions, we discussed what is the way to treat patients with COVID-19, what should be done for the protection of the medical teams, and the medical staff, with PPE, with masks, surgical masks. What to do to bring those people who carry the virus to the ordinary hospitals or to take them to a special hospital like we have in Yangon, the Wai-Bar-Gi Hospital. So all those questions and others came out and we discussed them together. Professors in Israel would like to hear Myanmar and the Myanmar experts and the professors would like to get the experience from their colleagues and counterparts in Israel.

Within that discussion, obviously there are differences between Israel and Myanmar, both in terms of population size, in terms of facilities, and so forth. Are they anything that came out that are common to both countries, or situations where you thought Myanmar really needs more of these particular facilities?

This is a new epidemic, novel pandemic that has the same characteristics all over the world. It is as you say a matter of supply of pharmaceutical and sets of check-ups of the virus. We just talked about this comparison between Myanmar and Israel especially Yangon and Israel. Well, you know the population of Yangon, the metropolitan of Yangon, is about 7 million people. In Israel, we are 9 million people. So Yangon is similar to Israel in the size of the population. And in Yangon, we have 18 hospitals. I am not counting, if I know well, private hospitals that are doing very well in Yangon but they are not competent now for the pandemic. I think that Myanmar needs a lot of supply for all the sources we just mentioned and you get it from countries like China and Korea and Japan and others, but I think that the knowledge is also very, very important. Maybe we cannot supply to Myanmar because of the distance, because there are no flights now in the sky, but we can use those video conferences to talk about our experience and our knowledge. This is not going into a closed door but to an open door.

I would like to tell you that before the COVID-19, one of the most important pillars of activity of the Israeli Embassy here in Myanmar in Yangon is the health care activity, the health care pillar, and we already talk with the professors and the health ministry and the health sector in Yangon, in Nay Pyi Taw and Myanmar about relationship between the hospitals in Israel and hospitals in Myanmar. And we are going to continue to do it after the COVID-19 era. We believe, I believe myself after 18 months here in Myanmar that there was already a wake-up call for the Myanmar health care situation.

Myanmar leaders, Myanmar grassroots and Myanmar professionals, everybody knows that Myanmar has to put much more efforts and of course budget into the situation of the health care system of the country. I think that this COVID-19 is also another wake-up call but it is not the first one. It is not that Myanmar came to this situation of the virus as it was not seeing that they need to upgrade very much the health care system in the country. We understand it, and we have a very good relationship with the Union Ministries of Nay Pyi Taw, so we are going to continue to contribute on that for Myanmar and for the benefit of the two countries.

One of the concerns with regard to Myanmar is that there could be an awful lot of cases where people have gone home to their villages, have spread out around the country, and are basically not being monitored, they go home, they might feel a bit off colour, there is this problem about testing, there is this problem about taking care of people quite often simply because you have already got a lot of existing diseases and conditions that people have and sometimes this can in a way mask that you have got a new virus come in. There is a prevailance of respiratory problems within Myanmar and it might be seen as just normal and people might either get over it or they might get into a very serious situation because they have got it and need help but they are out there in the villages and far away from medical facilities. Is there anything one can do or suggest in terms of this?

I would very much like to thank you for this question and to thank Mizzima for this opportunity because this is something that we talked about and we thought about. I think that the periphery in every country, the periphery here in Myanmar is a very important area that the centre needs to think about and to work for the benefit of. This is true for the economy, for the businesses, for the SMEs, for the electricity, for the agriculture but also for the health care. And we had the opportunity to discuss it in another video conference in this time of the COVID-19. You see the COVID-19 is kind of an engine in some way. We had another VC with the technology of the company of Binah artificial intelligence company in Israel. They actually did a special app for the mobile that can be used, not just for the COVID-19 and to understand whether you have a patient in the periphery that has a mobile cell in his hand but also it can bring a lot of good remedy and possibility to diagnose the situation of patients all around the country, by the internet, by the cell phones, this what is being called “digital medicine”. I think that this company and some other companies around the world are now developing this fantastic technology to help ministries of health and hospitals that are located especially in the centre, you know we have to admit that the best hospitals and in the best and the biggest cities, in countries like Israel, Myanmar and other countries. So they can arrange for the doctors and professors in those hospitals in the centre of the country to see the situation of the patient in the periphery and villages, like you said. They can see by the skin of the patient if he has those indications that he needs to be checked out, in the beginning by the doctor in the village, and afterwards they are going to have the data in the hospitals to continue to help the patients of the periphery.

So the technology is there. Now what you need to do is to understand and work on the opportunity to get this technology, to understand more about this technology, and to take it for your own benefit. You know we can always say that it is a matter of budget and money but I think money is achievable. The most important is cooperation and collaboration between countries and between scientists and between people who can contribute the research and development in between nations and people, people to people.

Right, and I think we are seeing around the world a move towards these apps, towards monitoring people, people having something on their mobile phone to be able to check. We have these options where for example people are actually rated, in terms of red or green or orange, so that you can actually be out and about and you might be alerted to the fact that somebody near you is registering red on the scale in terms of possibly being infected. Of course this gets into difficult ground because of course people start worrying about are we being over-monitored, what about privacy, those sorts of issues, but of course what we are talking about here is people’s health. That’s right, isn’t it?

Absolutely. For that you need regulation. You need a very good regulation. You need a very good legislation in your parliament and in the parliaments of the region or states in Myanmar, or in the Israeli parliament. You need a very good regulation because you need of course to check out and be aware of privacy as you just mentioned. On that also we can be in the assistance of Myanmar because you know Israel is a very old democracy, if you can count 72 years as an old democracy. Seventy-two years is also the years of Burma and Myanmar and we already talked with the parliament in Nay Pyi Taw about how we can contribute to the best legislation and regulation in Myanmar. This is a kind of a very important balance that we have in Israel between the technology, that can be called from time to time the technology of the Big Brother, and the protection of the privacy of the people; helping the people and helping them without breaking their privacy.

So, I think this is also something that we can be to the assistance of Myanmar and the assistance of some other countries. Of course my interest is Myanmar and Myanmar-Israel relationship.

How do you see this? It is very hard to know how all this is going to progress around the world and also in terms of Israel and Myanmar but how do you see things playing out over the next say six months in terms of Israel and also how do you see it in terms of Myanmar?

You know, who can predict? Because for example the seasons are very different. Here you get the flu in the rainy season of the summer, what we call the summer in Israel, June, July, August, September. In Israel, we get the flu in our winter, which is the rainy season in Israel from November to February. Each time there is a new flu maybe each time now we are going to get a new coronavirus 19, 20, 21. They say the virus is going to be weakened from one type to the another, let’s hope. I can tell you that today I have heard about a special research in the Weizmann Institute in Israel, they are doing biological research trying to see what the evolution has to say about that, and the statistics of the evolution, and with those numbers, because it is more about mathematics than biology, it is a combination of mathematics and biology. So in Israel they are working very hard and I am sure in some other countries in the east and in the west, and we cannot know if we are talking about three months, six months, or we are going to live forever with this virus as we have the influenza.

Again, let me remind you about what Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has said, like the leaders in Israel, that it is all a matter of cooperation between human beings and between countries.

Yes, and I think that is a very good point, this idea of cooperation, because two heads are better than one, but also in terms of what you have got in terms of the great health care facilities you have in Israel really does make a difference in terms of that. That would be very good that ongoing cooperation to help each other.

Absolutely, I agree with that and I hope that as the Embassy of Israel stationed here for the last more than 60 years, even 65 years, after Myanmar, then modern Burma was the first country in Southeast Asia that recognized Israel and it was a great friendship between the first prime minister of Myanmar and the first prime minister of Israel. So we know so many things about the friendship of the two countries and we can continue on that path to the future with all the challenges that mankind and the nature has for us. This is a matter of cooperation as you just said.

It really does make a lot of sense. Well thank you very much Ambassador. I think this is very helpful to us and I think we are going to have to really keep monitoring what is going on and hopefully we can come back later in terms of how things have been going in terms of progress.

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Israeli Ambassador Ronen Gilor, right, with medical equipment donations in Yangon. Photo: Thura for Mizzima