At least 19 people were killed when a gunbattle broke out early on May 12 in Muse in Myanmar's northern Shan state. The next morning, Ma Li climbed out of the shelter dug beside her home, crossed the Myanmar-China border and arrived at her workplace, an AIDS clinic in Ruili, Yunnan province.

At the Better Clinic, Ma, who speaks both Chinese and Burmese, the official language of Myanmar, serves as an interpreter and HIV/AIDS intervention outreach worker, particularly for the clinic's dozens of patients from Myanmar.

Ma, 53 and an ethnic Chinese from Myanmar, is a patient there herself. She began antiretroviral treatment in 2007 while serving a 12-year prison sentence for cross-border drug trafficking in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan.

Released in 2013, she returned home to Muse, which sits across the border from Ruili, and had her treatment referred to the Better Clinic, a 20-minute journey by electric motorcycle from her home.

She said the clinic gave her life-saving therapy and, more important, a meaning for the rest of her life - to help, in particular, needy patients from Myanmar and to contain the AIDS epidemic across the border.

Ma became a full-time worker at the clinic two years ago and has crossed the border for work ever since.

As part of her job, each week she and her colleagues deliver clean needles for intravenous drug users on both sides of the border.

"They are normal people, but I became scared by some carrying big knives," she said. "I feel good helping the left-behind people, as I was one myself many years ago."

Ma prides herself on once saving a drug user by promptly giving him a naloxone injection. Naloxone is a drug therapy that reverses the effects of opioids.

Located on the second floor of the Guomen Community Health Center in Ruili, the Better Clinic treats 132 AIDS patients including 43 Myanmar nationals, according to Zhang Lin, its operations manager.

"These patients, including Ma Lu, are given the same service as the 89 Chinese patients at the clinic," she said.

Apart from free drugs, the patients are given follow-up checks, including CD4 tests for immunity levels and viral load, which measure the effectiveness of the treatment, all funded by the Chinese government.

Yi Keke, from a village in Namhsan, Shan State, said, "The free treatment helps me settle down here and move on with life."

The 36-year-old looks like a Chinese except for the white Thanakha powder on her cheeks - a plant-based cosmetic popular with women in Myanmar to make the skin smooth and cool.

She lives with her Chinese husband and 6-year-old son in Ruili. The couple began treatment at the clinic when they were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS three years ago.

Every three months, Yi, who now works at a local restaurant, comes to the clinic for a new supply of drugs and a medical check-up. "I am doing well with the drugs, except for occasional insomnia," she said. The couple now makes about 2,000 yuan ($300) a month, with 400 yuan spent on rent.

Ten years ago, she left her hometown for Ruili to seek better employment. Back home, she was employed as a farm worker and made less than 10 yuan a day.

There were many more job opportunities back then with fewer immigrants from Myanmar, she said.

In Ruili, she has only a handful of friends, and Zhang Lin is one of them.

"Lin is nice to me and helped me through the tough early days when I first began the treatment," she said.

Every time she receives a new supply of drugs, Yi says she places them in a black plastic bag so that others cannot see them. She also said she hid her HIV status from others, even friends from her hometown.

Zhang said that in recent years more young women from Myanmar, especially from poor regions with frequent violence, have married Chinese and moved to Ruili.

Since the late 1990s, Ruili, a major crossing point between China and Myanmar that has prospered with cross-border trade, has attracted a rising number of nationals from Myanmar for business and job opportunities.

The county-level city in Dehong prefecture, Yunnan, has 200,000 residents, with 50,000 from Myanmar, according to Li Zhoulin, a researcher at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Ruili.

Due to the lack of a sound intervention system, HIV/AIDS is spreading in Myanmar, and only a small proportion of those infected are aware of their status, according to the World Health Organization.

The country has a population of more than 54 million and 230,000 have HIV/AIDS.

In recent years, Li said that an average of more than 300 HIV/AIDS cases have been detected annually in Ruili, and nearly 80 percent involve Myanmar nationals who live there or who frequently cross the border for work and trade.

To curb the disease, action must be taken regardless of the patients' nationalities, Li said.

In 2012, the local health authority began offering free HIV/AIDS intervention, treatment and follow-up services, particularly for those from Myanmar vulnerable to the disease such as intravenous drug users, long-haul cross-border truck drivers and illegal sex workers.

Initially, the free treatment was only for the spouses of local Chinese, such as Yi Kenken, but was later extended to Myanmar nationals in Ruili who could present residence and employment permits.

Close to the opium producing areas of the Golden Triangle countries of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, and major drug trafficking routes, Ruili's initial HIV cases in the late 1980s were among intravenous drug users.

As China stepped up the fight against drugs, scaling up methadone maintenance treatment and needle exchanges among intravenous drug users, HIV/AIDS cases related to drug injections dropped substantially in Ruili.

For HIV prevention, intravenous drug users from Myanmar in Ruili were also covered as Chinese citizens under a program largely subsidized by the government.

At the methadone outlet at the Better Clinic, Suo Mei, 26, has arrived every morning for the past three years to take 70 milliliters of the pink liquid under the supervision of doctors.

At a cost of 3 yuan a day, this has helped prevent Suo, who is from Myanmar, from injecting himself with drugs, and from potential HIV infection. After one visit, Suo, wearing jeans and a white baseball cap, rode his motorcycle to his workplace, a jade trade center several blocks from the clinic.

He now lives with his wife in Ruili. "Life is OK and under control," he said.

However, several kilometers away at the border waiting area, a long-haul truck driver from Myanmar in his early 20s was overwhelmed after testing positive for HIV, and realizing he now faces huge uncertainty.

He turned pale, sweat glistening on his forehead.

"Please don't let my mom know. She's outside waiting for me," he told a nurse at the Better Clinic who helps with information and counseling for those who test positive.

Long-haul truck drivers from Myanmar entering China undergo HIV tests under an anti-AIDS partnership between the two countries.

Those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS are referred for treatment said the nurse, adding that most became infected after paying for sex.

Apart from the screening, the clinic provides them with safe sex education and HIV prevention information, she said.

Li Zhoulin, a researcher at the Ruili Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said, "In many cases, the interventions and treatment for those at high risk, or the patients, work as a preventive measure for other people, too."

The measures taken in Ruili have been extended to other border towns, counties and prefectures in the province, including Longchuan, Mangshi and Xishuangbanna, said Jia Manhong, assistant director of the Yunnan Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 60 km from Ruili, near a methadone treatment outlet in Laying, a town in Longchuan county, low bamboo fences stand along the border between China and Myanmar.

At times when the border patrols are not strictly enforced, Yang Ronghua from Myanmar crosses the fence and walks to the outlet to take his daily methadone medication.

He jokingly describes himself as a "treatment stowaway" and can see his home from the second-floor balcony of the clinic.

"It's convenient for me to take methadone here," said the 37-year-old, who has been on the therapy for four years at the clinic. He previously injected himself with heroin.

In Myanmar, the nearest methadone outlet he can go to is 42 km away.

Cun Daiqi, a doctor at the Laying clinic, said more than 30 people were crossing the border each day from Myanmar for the treatment in China.

He said they cross the border frequently and are covered by the AIDS intervention programs. "That also helps with HIV control on our side."

Throughout Yunnan, consensus has been reached to include local non-Chinese under the general AIDS control efforts, according to Lu Lin, deputy director of the Yunnan Health and Family Planning Commission.

Foreigners account for 10 percent of the 10,000 annually detected new HIV/AIDS cases in Yunnan, he said, citing the provincial epidemic surveillance network.

They are mainly from the neighboring countries of Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos. Some work in Yunnan and some moved to the province after marrying local Chinese.

To curb a disease that knows no national borders, a united frontline against HIV/AIDS has been formed among the countries, Lu said.

"We cooperate in information-sharing, staff training, disease prevention, screening and treatment within the union," he said.

To date, more than 1,300 anti-AIDS workers from the three countries have been trained in Yunnan.

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