Leang Lev, 67, crouches on the mud-packed floor of his home in the jungle outside Banlung. He takes one of the red pills out of its small plastic bag and rolls it between his finger tips.
“I just go to the private clinic and tell them I have a back ache, stomach ache, or whatever,” said Leang Lev, whose house is about two kilometers from Banlung along a narrow dirt path. “Then they give me medicine.”
The gradual transition away from traditional healing to a reliance on modern prescription drugs and western-style medicine has put a crunch on Ratanakkiri province’s limited health services. At the same time access to health care is becoming more urgent for many of the region’s isolated indigenous populations.
“Some of the villages are 30 kilometers from a health center,” said a health worker from Health Unlimited in Ratanakkiri. “Some of the health center staff have very little training and some are illiterate or barely literate.”
Health Unlimited is in the process of setting up 17 health posts throughout the province. The posts will provide local staff and some health services to the villagers, including basic malaria and anti-parasite treatment, information on diarrhea prevention and some medication. But for major illnesses, people have to get to the hospital in Banlung, often on difficult roads through unforgiving terrain.
“I see villagers walking down the road with a pole and a hammock carrying someone like they were in a stretcher,” Briasco said. “There’s a train of people following them with pots and pans and it breaks my heart. I always think, ‘what’s going to happen to them when they get to the hospital?’”
Villagers have complained that those who arrive at the hospital with money are given priority and better care. Some say they have been refused services altogether.
“I have been there one time for a serious illness,” Leang Lev said. “That one time I took my son, the doctor gave him an injection and he died right after. I stopped going cause I was scared.”
Some say they have been refused care altogether. Hospital administrators say they never refuse service and there are unrealistic expectations on the part of indigenous villagers who may have never been to a western doctor before.
“The patient usually arrives at the hospital already in a very serious condition because the journey to get here takes a long time trekking through the jungle,” said Ly Channarith, Deputy Director of Ratanakkiri Referral Hospital. “Some also spend a long time first holding traditional ceremonies, sacrificing a chicken, then a pig and then a buffalo. By the time they decide to come in, it’s already too late.”
