New Surgery Facility Fills Void in Mondolkiri Left by NGO

sen monorom, Mondolkiri pro­vince – A  new surgery room at the local hospital here has brought modern medical care to the people of this remote town just as the largest health NGO in the region prepares to withdraw.

The European Union-funded surgery facility opened at Sen Monorom hospital late last month and has been run by Khmer surgeon Sea Sok Meang.

He already claims 10 surgeries to his credit for illnesses as varied as hernias, cleft lips, a bone fracture, benign tumors and a Cae­sarian section.

Minor surgeries, perhaps, but for the people of Mondolkiri the sur­gery wing offers a life-saving and inexpensive alternative to driving to Phnom Penh or hospitals in Vietnam’s Dak Lak province. What health care is available in Mondolkiri is mostly consumed with battling the region’s biggest killers: Malaria, diarrhea and acute respiratory infections.

That there are health care services at all is largely thanks to Medecins du Monde, a French medical NGO that has run a wide-ranging health care program in Mondolkiri since 1992.

After a decade of working with the local population, especially the ethnic minority community, the NGO is withdrawing this month from Mondolkiri, officials said. The change is due to a variety of reasons, including budget shortfalls.

There have been discussions with other health care NGOs to take over the MDM program, said Philippe Guyant, the MDM medical coordinator in Mondol­kiri and a Paris-trained doctor.

In the meantime, MDM will pro­vide some support for the next three months to the local hospital and smaller health centers and posts within the pro­vince, he said.

The NGO opened here be­cause the province was isolated, in need of development and home to a population of ethnic mi­­norities, Guyant said. The program has cost $300,000 to $400,000 a year, he said.

The program rehabilitated the local hospital, then developed a primary health care program in five districts of the province.

For the last four years the program has also supported the local hospital and conducted training programs. In that time, the number of monthly patients has nearly doubled from 1997 to 2001, from 58 per month to 112, Guyant said. The number of patients transferred to Phnom Penh or Dak Lak has been multiplied by five times, from about one person per month to five.

The number of annual deaths due to disease has dropped from 17 to five since 1997, Guyant said, and the hospital’s mortality rate has decreased from 2.4 percent to 0.4 percent. But there’s need for more funding. Equipment is secondhand and some machines break down during surgeries, Sea Sok Meang said.

A life support ma­chine told doctors that the patient they were working on had died on the table when actually the patient was fine, he said.

“When that happened we were very frightened but after we checked with the patient we learned that it was the machine. Now we do not believe it that much,” he said.

Patient Vong Samnang, 12, was among the first to benefit from the new medical facility when he was treated for a painful hernia, said his mother, Chem Sophat, 40.

“If this hospital did not exist I would not know what to do because going to Phnom Penh or Vietnam would cost a lot of money. My family is not rich. I could not afford it,” she said.

 

 

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