For many of you, it was volunteering your precious vacation time, for others it was bringing medicines, hygiene kits, toys and art supplies and for some it was holding dinner parties and presentations to raise awareness of the work of AHC in Siem Reap. To all of you we owe you a very special thank you. Your generous contributions of time and money go a long ways in Cambodia. We are so very appreciative of your participation and charity. You are truly making a difference.

Download the original pdf file here.

From sending shoe boxes full of toys and other goodies to give out to the Cambodian kids, to organizing fundraising events, to graciously hosting Cambodian staff visiting Canada, Canadians from all over the country have helped to make Angkor Hospital for Children the place that Cambodian families want to bring their children to for medical care.

And of course, many thanks to all the Canadians who made the very, very long journey over to Cambodia to support us in person, working alongside our Cambodian staff, kindly sharing their knowledge and experiences always with the goal of building up the skills of the health professionals here….and to get our staff in shape.

It was wonderful having other Canadians visit us in Siem Reap. I do hope that everyone who did, had fun. I encourage you to please extend my invitation to other Canadians to come spend some time with us at AHC. Our new fully donated visitor’s center offers a museum atmosphere providing the AHC story since inception in 1999.

Again from everyone here at Angkor Hospital for Children, thank you so much and have a wonderful Canada Day!

Sincerely,
David Shoemaker
Angkor Hospital for Children
Siem Reap, Kingdom of Cambodia

Angkor Hospital for Children provides free pediatric care to more than 300 children each day; trains thousands of healthcare professionals each year; and strives to restore Cambodia’s healthcare infrastructure. Every child has the right to a happy and healthy life!

And that it truly is, serving the Buddhist, Muslims, Hindus and Christians of Yangon city. We were greeted at the entrance by hordes of patients lined up to collect their prescribed medications. The out patient department was calling patient number 346! And it was only 10:30am. Our group arrived laden with bags of medical supplies, donations in kind from Canada, making for difficult passage in an already very crowd space.

The donations we bring include sutures, anti-biotics, ambu-bags, multi-vitamins, skin oitments, surgical blades, steri-strips,

As of September 30th, the building for the satellite project at Sotnikum is 80% complete. Due to some cost savings, the building has been extended to 17 x 17 meters and has a covered waiting area in front. In addition, the water tank for the entire Sotnikum hospital has been refurbished and a donated water purification system will be installed in December which will benefit the entire facility.

Overall, the project is a little ahead of schedule. Currently, the supplies and equipment for the facility are being purchased and training for new staff will begin in the next few months ahead. A combination of expatriate and Khmer Physician staffing will ensure both enough quantity and quality of staffing to make the venture successful.

We would again like to especially thank the donors who have made this possible. The contributions made by both the Planet Wheeler Foundation and the Cassils – Wettstein Fund will have a profound impact on the health of the children in Sotnikum District. Today, 1 out of 15 children in rural areas such as this continue to die of treatable illnesses. This project will profoundly help improve the lives of the children in this district and beyond as it serves as an example of what health care should be like in Cambodia – high quality, compassionate care.

Helping Change the World for Children in Rural Cambodia

Children are the innocent victims of the most drastic consequences of poverty. In Cambodia, thousands of children die each year of preventable and treatable disease and it is not uncommon for a child to die of complications from respiratory infections, diarrhea, and diseases which are practically eradicated in the more developed countries.

In this impoverished and battered country, the mortality statistics are earthshaking:

• 15% of Cambodian children die before the age of 5
• 35% of Cambodian children are not immunized for polio, measles, or diphtheria
• 45% of Cambodian children under 5 are moderately to severely underweight
• 12,000 Cambodian children under the age of 15 live with HIV/AIDS

Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC) will replicate the quality pediatric treatment and teaching programs that have earned its acclaim by building a new pediatric wing which will be a part of the government-operated Sot Nikum Referral Hospital. The presence of this new pediatric center will relieve families from taking the arduous journey to AHC to get proper care for their children thereby reducing the morbidity and mortality of delayed treatment and saving time, saving resources, and saving precious lives.

In the long term, the success of this model pediatric health care facility may lead to additional such centers, allowing AHC to extend its successful health care programs throughout the country, especially into poor rural farming regions. It is conceivable that this project may be the start of a dramatic improvement in Cambodian healthcare.

The AHC Satellite Program has been designed in collaboration with the staff at AHC to maximize efficiency of operation. It will include all the necessary accoutrements of a modern hospital. And, recognizing that properly trained, quality health professionals can mean the difference between life and death for many children in Cambodia, the Satellite will effïciently and effectively combine resources with AHC staff to provide the best training for all doctors, nurses, lab technicians and pharmacy staff.

In addition to basic treatment, healthcare education and medical training objectives, the pediatric center will:

• encourage admissions for emergency treatment for children referred from health centers and other referral hospitals
• engage relevant existing health agencies and NGOs to improve links within the community
• bring health education directly to communities in Siem Reap Province while working to strengthen the quality of services available at local government-run health center

The new Angkor Hospital for Children Satellite Program is ready to begin transforming the face of health-care in Cambodia! And, who knows, in the words of former President of the United States, William J. Clinton: “There is hope that Cambodia can be a model for the rest of Asia and perhaps the world… ”

The slogan of this charitable hospital is “For the poor of all communities” and that it truly is, serving the Buddhist, Muslims, Hindus and Christians of Yangon city. We were greeted at the entrance by hordes of patients lined up to collect their prescribed medications. The out patient department was calling patient number 346! And it was only 10:30am. Our group arrived laden with bags of medical supplies, donations in kind from Canada, making for difficult passage in an already very crowd space. The donations we bring each year include sutures, anti-biotics, ambu bags, multi-vitamins, skin ointments, surgical blades, steri-strips, dental instruments and book.

I have sent you a thank you similar to the attached but just wanted to make sure you did receive it.

The truck is wonderful and has really made a difference to the lives of the children in our direct care and the children in our free school. I took a group of young children to the zoo near Kanchanaburi last week and they loved going in the truck. So much easier to keep the children safe and to manage large numbers.

The truck has even made a couple of late night emergency runs to the hospital in Kanchanaburi.

It is brilliant, Thank you,

Kind regards, Mark
Manager
Children of the Forest Project
Sangkhlaburi
Thailand.

SIEM REAP, Cambodia — David Shoemaker, a nurse from Winnipeg, stumbled upon Siem Reap during a volunteer trip to Southeast Asia in January 2000 and decided to return to continue his efforts. He’s still there.

Siem Reap, site of the architectural wonder of the world, Angkor Wat, shows Cambodia’s tentative steps toward economic growth. When I first saw it in 2004, Siem Reap seemed to be another dusty town with a great attraction, slowly emerging in the global tourism market. When I revisited it a year ago, billboards were promoting new shopping malls and cellphones, and hotels were competing with aid groups for real estate.

It has helped that a decade has passed since Pol Pot died quietly in the jungles of northern Cambodia. Brother No. 1 and his radical form of agrarian communism, enforced by the dreaded Khmer Rouge, brought the country to its knees. No one is doing more than Shoemaker to get it back on its feet.

“What has kept me here for so long? Quite simply, it is the people, the doctors, nurses, housekeepers and the rest of the staff at AHC (Angkor Hospital for Children),” Shoemaker said. “I have never experienced a country where the people want so desperately to learn and improve.”

Sheila Anzarut, the wife of a neurologist from Vancouver who has volunteered here since 2007, says of Shoemaker: “David is, without a doubt, the face of Angkor Hospital for Children, for both the staff, the volunteers and for the many visitors and donors who come into contact with him. He is the person who instills us with so much passion for helping.”

And help is so badly needed. For every 1,000 babies born in Cambodia, 22 or more die in their first month and 66 before their first birthday. Another 17 die before their fifth birthday. Poverty is a large part of the problem: More than a third of 14 million Cambodians earn less than 60 cents a day.

Walking with Shoemaker through Angkor Children’s Hospital is a stirring experience. Everyone we pass along the way has a smile or a respectful nod for him. Every morning, he tells me, the emergency room is filled with crowds of children and tired parents. We encounter a Canadian volunteer play therapist, Liz Harrop-Archibald, surrounded by smiling children, cutting out paper crowns and making fish mobiles for them. Their smiles are the reward, I suspect, that keeps humanitarians like Shoemaker Harrop-Archibald able to carry on.

Shoemaker tells me that his first year here there were about 10,000 visits by families to the hospital — about 25 or 30 a day. By 2007, that number had increased to over 100,000 visits — an average of 350-400 children each day. The increase in the number of tourists since I was first here, reported on various websites, is staggering. From approximately 500 in 1985, 600,000 in 2005, and with a predicted 3 million tourists coming by the year 2010, more than half of them visit Siem Reap.

It is hard to believe that the tourism boom — it’s estimated to bring $600 million to Cambodia in 2010 — is actually hurting the survival odds of its children. Beyond the five-star hotels and fancy restaurants, however, tourist dollars have not filtered down to the people who need it most. At first, I was happy to note that there were not as many street children evident this time, as opposed to the vast number of them I saw in 2004. Soon, however, I learn that the absence of street children is due to a local initiative to run them out of town exactly because of the rapid rise in tourism. It is possible that local bureaucrats fear street kids will somehow threaten their ever-growing windfall of tourist currency.

No one in this country is untouched by the horrors of the past. Mention of the Khmer Rouge creates instant discomfort and a change of subject. Many Cambodians endure poor eyesight and still don’t wear glasses because the Pol Pot regime saw them as a sign of education. Wearing them could be fatal. Fear still affects behavior and signs of that are everywhere.

The next day, I accompany Shoemaker on rounds to outpatient houses benefited by the HIV/Homecare Project. He and Cambodian nurse Dim Sophearin load up the AHC truck and we head to the first house, where a couple of HIV-positive children are tending to their baby sibling in a blistering hot bamboo shack. They get a sack with a week’s worth of nutritious food and snacks. The AHC says “under-nutrition represents the single most important risk factor for the health of Cambodian children.” Shoemaker questions them on the state of their health and the condition of the baby, then takes vital signs and records blood pressure, heart rate and weight. The HIV/Homecare Project consists of health assessments, education and counseling. With it comes the calm, natural interaction of Shoemaker, smiling and joking to lighten the atmosphere. He hands the children his stethoscope and shows them how to listen to their heartbeat.

We head back into the truck and drive another kilometer to visit with a young, stable, HIV-positive girl, whose parents died from the virus and who now lives with her grandmother. Shoemaker patiently explains, this time to a grandmother, how to take the medicines and questions the family on any changes in their health. The little girl reacts happily as pictures are taken, with a beautiful, poignant smile. This image contrasts sharply with the sobering fact that every child we visit today is HIV-positive.

“The hospital has done a lot in the last several years but there is still so much more to do,” Shoemaker said. “The biggest health challenge for Cambodia’s poor children is simply better access to the appropriate health-care facilities. With 80 percent of Cambodia’s population living in rural areas, it is often difficult or impossible for them to find good, effective inexpensive health care.

“What AHC is trying to do over the next several years is work together with the Cambodian Ministry of Health to build up the skills and knowledge of doctors and nurses working in these rural areas, so that these children will not have to travel so far… they will get health care faster and this will save lives.” I ask Shoemaker how he feels the training of the staff is going. He says how proud he is of them and how their skills and knowledge have progressed so thoroughly that they have gained the complete trust of the community. Moreover, he adds, 98 per cent of the staff in his hospital are Cambodian and each year there is less and less need for foreigners. “I am working myself out of a job,” he adds with a grin. (Source: Winnipeg Free Press)

David Shoemaker in the crowded waiting room at Angkor Children’s Hospital in Siem Reap, Cambodia. (Photo By Rick Friedlander )