Dr Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners In Health, talks about “oops” health care leading to “stupid deaths”. I have often referred to the destitution seen in Cambodia, caused by people needing to pay from their pockets for all health care costs – that’s “Out Of Pocket Spending”, or “oops”. Health care in Cambodia, and across … More Oops and Stupid Deaths
This is a World Health Organisation growth chart for a child from birth to six months old. The Y axis follows weight in kilograms, while the X axis follows the age in weeks to 12 weeks, then in months to six months. The coloured curves traveling from the left to the right of the chart … More TB? Or Not TB?
Burnt to a crisp, parts of his clothes fused to his charred skin, his face black and locked in an expression of pain and horror, the patient had been doused in petrol and set alight by an angry boss. Shuttled from health center to provincial hospital and finally making it at impossible expense to the … More Treating Treasures as Trash
She lives in a tin hut in a back alley filled with makeshift shacks stacked beside and atop of each other. Roosters crow, ducks, chooks and skinny kittens peck around for morsels in the same muddy piles of trash, dogs laze in shaded patches, and pigeons coo from a cage. A neighbour is crouched over … More Trash To Treasure
This week I lost my housemate and friend to Bangladesh, where she will work with the Rohingya refugees escaping indescribable violence in Rakhine State across the border in Myanmar. We spoke a lot about them and about Cambodia before she left. It always looped back to ourselves, our appreciation for our extreme luck of birth … More Eye Is For Ice
Many hours of many days during my first 2 years in Cambodia were spent adventuring with my good friend, a tuk tuk driver who I blog-named Chom. He is currently living in Japan to earn $60 per day as a farm worker (10 hours per day, 7 days per week). This is big money to … More Pimp My Tuk Tuk
It is much more difficult in Phnom Penh, to find the impetus to write. My accommodation is a fifth floor apartment overlooking rooftops for as far as the eye can see. This removes me from community life somewhat although I’m slowly starting to recognise the neighbours beyond our apartment block. We recently relocated our office … More Standing On The Outside, Looking In
Yesterday I watched in awe as a group of men and women covered from head to toe with traditional checked khromars wrapped around their heads for sun protection and dressed in pyjamas (women) or shirts and jeans (men), worked with a heavy wheelbarrow, carting wet concrete from the mixer about fifty metres away, to a … More Wheelbarrows and Debts
Last time I gave a pseudonym to a young patient so I could refer to him easily, he died, making me reluctant to name my young friend. But she is the same 14yo with HIV and TB that I refer to in my previous entry “Observations of Poverty”. She has been with us for the … More The Anguish of AIDS
For much of my time here I feel harrowed by the situations I see people existing in. I regularly have to talk myself out of the tears which threaten to surface as I realise the significance of the poverty I’m witnessing. But the smiles on the faces of those who own these situations usually manage … More Observations of Poverty
alicespringstomind 