Helping remote Cambodian villages leap from poverty and isolation to join the rest of the global village

A group of six remote Cambodian villages are making the leap from poverty and isolation directly into the global village through a series of innovative programs spearheaded by a voluntary organization run by a former journalist. The programs include health care, education and economic development through a village silk industry.

Since February 2001, Cambodia’s Sihanouk Hospital Center of HOPE and Partners Telemedicine in Massachusetts, have collaborated on a pioneering telemedicine project called “Operation Village Health”. This first Cambodian telemedicine clinic opened in Robib, a group of six small villages in remote, north central Cambodia, more than a nine-hour drive from Phnom Penh. A second telemedicine clinic was established at Ratanikiri Referral Hospital in April 2003 to expand access to Operation Village Health. In September, a “mobile internet village delivery system” using motorbikers to pick up and deliver e-mail by wireless technology to very remote villages was pioneered to 13 locations plus one health center in Ratanakiri.

The two monthly telemedicine clinics give patients access to physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Partners/Dana Farber Cancer Care. A visiting nurse from Phnom Penh travels six hours to the village where he or she interviews, examines and digitally photographs patients, then transmits the information by satellite to physicians in Boston using a solar-powered computer. Within hours these physicians respond with medical opinions and treatment recommendations. Over 600 clinical consultations have been performed since the telemedicine clinics began in 2001.

Former journalist Bernard Krisher’s nonprofit association, American Assistance for Cambodia/Japan Relief for Cambodia, has been working to use the internet to help Robib leap out of isolation and poverty into the global village since 1990. Prince Sihanouk, who met Mr. Krisher when he covered Cambodia for Newsweek in the mid-1960s, asked for his help. Mr. Krisher, whose Polish-immigrant family fled Nazi terror in Germany in 1937 when he was six, wanted to give something to Cambodia, which is still recovering from the Khmer Rouge regime that killed 1.7 million people in the late 1970s. In 1994, he founded and became publisher of The Cambodia Daily, a small English-language newspaper in Phnom Penh, and also raised money for and helped found the Sihanouk Hospital of Hope, in Phnom Penh, which is now the nation's largest hospital. He set up American Assistance for Cambodia in 1990, running it with his wife, Akiko, and his daughter, Deborah Krisher-Steele.

Most recently, the group created a permanent Internet connection to a primary school in Robib, being provided at no charge by Shin Satellite in neighboring Thailand. By placing the village directly on the Internet, he hopes to help transform a region in which the average per capita income is about $37 a year. As well as providing computer education and Web access to a village school attended by 400 students, the Internet is supporting a small woven-silk industry in the village, which sells silk scarves and table runners on the Internet. "We're trying to show that the Internet can really help a single village," said Mr. Krisher, whose nonprofit group is based in Tokyo, where he lives.

The Sihanouk Hospital Center of HOPE provides free care to Cambodians in need, funded by HOPE Worldwide, an international charitable organization and World Mate, a Japanese non-profit welfare organization. Partners Telemedicine is a division of PartnersHealthCare , a non-profit organization founded by Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, major teaching centers for Harvard Medical School. Since the mid 1990s, it has been using telemedicine to deliver medical care to patients in more than 30 countries.

This story was prepared from three sources: the stories about telemedicine on the website www.villageleap.com; a story entitled “Ex-journalist leads crusade for schools in Cambodia” by Jeerawat Na Thalang in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer November 6, 2000; a story entitled “It takes the internet to raise a Cambodian village – small scale projects try to reverse urbanization” by John Markoff, and information about the Village Health program on the Partners Telemedicine website. For more information about the Cambodia schools project, see www.cambodiaschools.com.

 

For other stories of how technology is being used in healthcare, see:

Personal Digital Assistants, and open source software, save lives in Africa

Mobile phones bring access to health information in Bangladesh

Recycled phones and free software revolutionize health care for Malawi hospital

Telemedicine brings improved health care to remote part of Canada

 

For other stories about hospitals, see:

Old US hospital equipment, vital supplies bring new life in developing countries

International coalition makes hospital and health care safe, sustainable, healthy for all

Medical excellence and loving care among conflicts, poverty and epidemics in Northern Uganda

Linking the health community to resources and each other in Nepal


Page Information

  • 2 weeks ago [history]
  • View page source
  • You're not logged in
  • Tags: Stories about Health Stories about Schools Stories about Sharing Cambodia

Wiki Information

Recent PBwiki Blog Posts