Siem Reap, the home of the famous Angkor Wat temple complex, now welcomes around 2 million tourists a year and is bursting with luxury hotels, restaurants and entertainment clubs. Yet it remains one of the poorest provinces in Cambodia. Where is all the money going? I guess there are some local people working for minimal wages cleaning hotels and serving in restaurants but on the whole the money leaves the province into the hands of foreign owners or wealthy national business people. There are some serious flaws in that old ‘trickle down’ theory.
This was all starkly illustrated to me recently while on a visit to the Siem Reap provincial referral hospital with a group of doctors and medical students from New Zealand. The hospital is a 2 minute walk down the road from the key tourist strip. It’s like going from one world into another. One minute we were strolling through a trendy tourist area with scantily clad foreigners breakfasting in the open air cafés. The next we were amongst weary, confused families camping outside dilapidated wards. They looked tired and anxious as they cooked their food on little clay pots and hung their washing on any tree or post they could find. Many had spent more money than they could afford just getting their sick family member to the hospital. They then needed to pay for any procedure or medicine deemed necessary which often means selling assets or going into debt. If they can’t pay they will have to pack up their ailing loved one and head home. This major regional government hospital is very poorly resourced. They reuse gloves and needles in some wards to keep expenses down. Patients are denied blood transfusions if they cant replace the blood through a donation from a family member. There is an x-ray machine but no CT or MRI scan and very little in the way of other diagnostics. Many of the staff are poorly trained and often struggle with low morale due to their pitiful wages and lack of professional support. The intensive care unit has no ventilator machines, the nearest one being in Phnom Penh, 6 hours away by road. That’s a long time to bag air into someone who is not breathing adequately on their own. Unusually someone that sick will simply be left to die.
One of our IS team members has been working at this facility training and equipping the midwives to improve maternal health and bring down the high number of unnecessary maternal deaths. It’s been hard, frustrating and at times heart breaking work but things are starting to turn around as she gently guides and models different approaches and encourages the very poorly paid midwives to do the best they can.
I wondered how many of the tourists had any idea about the misery just down the street or thought about where their dollars were going.
If you are planning a visit to the wondrous temples of Angkor, pack a box of surgical gloves and think about sparing a litre of blood. The provincial hospital welcomes donations.
This was all starkly illustrated to me recently while on a visit to the Siem Reap provincial referral hospital with a group of doctors and medical students from New Zealand. The hospital is a 2 minute walk down the road from the key tourist strip. It’s like going from one world into another. One minute we were strolling through a trendy tourist area with scantily clad foreigners breakfasting in the open air cafés. The next we were amongst weary, confused families camping outside dilapidated wards. They looked tired and anxious as they cooked their food on little clay pots and hung their washing on any tree or post they could find. Many had spent more money than they could afford just getting their sick family member to the hospital. They then needed to pay for any procedure or medicine deemed necessary which often means selling assets or going into debt. If they can’t pay they will have to pack up their ailing loved one and head home. This major regional government hospital is very poorly resourced. They reuse gloves and needles in some wards to keep expenses down. Patients are denied blood transfusions if they cant replace the blood through a donation from a family member. There is an x-ray machine but no CT or MRI scan and very little in the way of other diagnostics. Many of the staff are poorly trained and often struggle with low morale due to their pitiful wages and lack of professional support. The intensive care unit has no ventilator machines, the nearest one being in Phnom Penh, 6 hours away by road. That’s a long time to bag air into someone who is not breathing adequately on their own. Unusually someone that sick will simply be left to die.
One of our IS team members has been working at this facility training and equipping the midwives to improve maternal health and bring down the high number of unnecessary maternal deaths. It’s been hard, frustrating and at times heart breaking work but things are starting to turn around as she gently guides and models different approaches and encourages the very poorly paid midwives to do the best they can.
I wondered how many of the tourists had any idea about the misery just down the street or thought about where their dollars were going.
If you are planning a visit to the wondrous temples of Angkor, pack a box of surgical gloves and think about sparing a litre of blood. The provincial hospital welcomes donations.
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