2009 has passed and 2010 is coming! Today is the last day of the 2009 and please accept the wishes from Children and staff at Angkor Hospital for Children. May New Year brings you and your family good health, good wealth, good luck, and prosperity.
 
With warmest wishes!

The Angkor Hospital for Children, founded by renowned Japanese photographer Kenro Izu in 1999, supported by Friends Without A Border, provides comprehensive medical care to children in the Siem Reap area. On average, 400 children and their families arrive at the hospital each day. Recognized by Cambodia’s Ministry of Health as an official teaching hospital, it serves as a training site for health professionals throughout Cambodia through its Medical Education Center. The Capacity Building and Health Education Program works to both strengthen the capacity and improves the quality of local health centers and works with community members to teach good public health practices. 

Charity Navigator, America’s leading independent charity evaluator, endorses Friends Without A Border with four stars.

www.angkorhospital.org | www.fwab.org

Helping Change the World for Children in Rural Cambodia

Dr. John and Nina Cassils are co-founders of the Cassils Wettstein Asia Fund that advocates for clean water, healthcare, education and income generation in South East Asia. Having traveled extensively throughout South East Asia since the mid 1980’s the Cassils formally co-founded the Cassils Wettstein Asia Fund with Wieland and Susan Wettstein in 2005. Together with the Wettsteins, the Cassils are committed to projects in SE Asia including the Angkor Hospital for Children. Their philosophy is to work directly with those in the field. In 2003 Nina learned about a Canadian involved at Angkor Hospital for Children and their unwavering commitment to work with AHC began. The Cassils continue to visit all their projects in SE Asia annually.

“We are honoured to be part of the 10th anniversary of AHC and witness the groundbreaking ceremony for the new satellite program. We have great admiration for the personal achievements and sacrifices made by Kenro Izu, David Shoemaker and the 28 recipients working at AHC since its inception to make AHC a center of excellence in pediatrics. AHC has played a key role in rebuilding Cambodia’s health and medical educational system and is a model hospital for all of SE Asia.

The new satellite program in Sot Nikum is of great importance allowing swift access to medical treatment without the exhorbitant cost of transportation thus encouraging families to seek treatment before their child is seriously ill. With 30% of AHC patients coming from this area, the new facility will take some of the pressure off the already heavily tasked AHC in Siem Reap. We congratulate the staff of AHC, the volunteers and donors for making Kenro’s dream a reality.”

Dr. John and Nina Cassils on behalf of The Cassils Wettstein Asia Fund

Download a PDF describing the 10 year history of AHC (11mb)

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

Read more …

Five weeks passed very quickly at the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We were tasked with producing a report on malnutrition, and thus sifted through about 150 patients’ charts to gather data. Our supervisor, David Shoemaker, also dispatched us often to follow-up on patients and, in the process, to see the ‘real Cambodia’: a conservative society revolving around the family and the field. It was a world apart from our native Canada; when we reported that a child, admitted to AHC in 2007 for malnutrition, had since been crushed to death by a cow, we were told that this happens frequently in Cambodia.

The chart review itself was equally fascinating. Written into the charts were family trees as large as they were complicated. The notes described murder, incomes below one dollar a month, fluctuating family sizes, appalling malnutrition, abandonment, and cases of HIV transmission via wet-nurses’ breast milk. And so, over five weeks, we were introduced to the private life of Cambodia.

Read more …