MAE SOT, Thailand – Dr. Cynthia Maung, the ethnic Karen physician who founded the Mae Tao clinic for refugees on the Thai-Burma border, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Maung’s clinic, which serves mostly Karen refugees, has received funding from Clear Path International for its prosthetics department since 2001. The prosthetics shop forms a hub for the production of prostheses along the Thai-Burma border, where thousands of refugees have been maimed by landmine or anti-personnel device explosions.

Born into a Karen family in Rangoon, Maung’s work as a young doctor at a tiny rural clinic in Karen state enabled her to witness firsthand the poverty and disease endemic under Burmese military rule. She was among millions who joined nationwide antigovernment protests in 1988—and, a few months later, one of thousands who fled over the border into Thailand to escape the junta’s crackdown.

Traveling at night to evade army patrols, Maung and 14 colleagues trekked through the jungle for seven days before reaching the border. Although she has now lived in exile in Thailand for a decade and a half, Maung has no official papers and her clinic is not officially registered with the Thai government.

Everyday, 200 patients pass through the Mae Tao clinic. Its five doctors and 120 other medical staff treat everything from diarrhea to landmine amputations, virtually for free with the support of numerous international donors. Maung has been awarded numerous international prizes, most recently a Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership. The unassuming 43-year-old doctor was selected by TIME Magazine as one of “Asia’s Heros.”

Clear Path began supporting Maung’s clinic in 2001, after reading an appeal for support of landmine accident survivors in the Landmine Monitor and being introduced to the facility by Seattle-based pediatrician Dr. Tao Kwan-Gett. The organization has funded materials to make prostheses, the training of technicians, the construction of a new production shop/patient ward, and the introduction of new measurement and production technology.