Hades in Cambodia
I have just been as close to Hell on earth as it is surely possible to be. Siem Reap is tourist town, being the service centre for Angkor and the visitor is well catered for here. There are wonderful places to stay and great places to eat. The main focus for the bar and restaurant area is known as Pub Street. It is not just one street but a small tangle of streets and alleyways where drinking holes and eateries jostle for business. It is not an area that I frequent too much but there are a few excellent dining rooms. It is all a bit too raucous for me, partially because of my age but, mostly, because it is not really the Siem Reap that I know and love.
Directly across the street from Pub Street is the Siem Reap Referral Hospital. All adults have to be treated here and you are classed as an adult when a young teenager. There are two children's hospitals in town both run by NGO's where treatment and drugs are free. God help the adult Cambodian population if this is their only option. I have passed this place hundreds of times but never ventured in, until today that is. Lori had warned me about it. She told me that if she ever found herself needing to go there for treatment she would pray for death. Having seen it now I would go a step further and just slit my wrists. It is quite a large complex of different buildings surrounded by grassy areas and about a million kilos of rubbish. The filth is quite unbelievable. There is an all pervading sickly smell of decay everywhere. Inmates have to be cared for by relatives. If you have no one you are not cleaned and you starve. There are people lying everywhere, in corridors, outside, on the floor and cheek by jowl in the 'wards'. There is no linen, of course, the sick just lie on mats, if they are lucky to have one brought for them or just on the floor or on a bare metal bed. I saw many lying in their own excrement and vomit, there is blood on the floor and on the walls and rubbish everywhere. I saw no evidence that anything was ever cleaned except for one relative who was sloshing some dirty water over a mat covered in blood and faeces. Many patients have i.v. drips hanging from hooks or just held by relatives The grassy areas are full of family members cooking food and generally just hanging about. The only things not much in evidence were the staff. The whole place felt as if not a soul was actually working there. Government Doctors in Cambodia earn such a pitiful amount that if they did not moonlight elsewhere they would starve. If this is how the State thinks that healthcare should be in this country then heaven help Cambodia.
I could smell the outside latrines long before I saw them. I was wearing a mask, not that it probably did much good. I suppose that people must get better here of course, but it's hard to see how. I have heard stories of people who died in there without any family members to take care of them and no one has noticed for a day or more until other patients start to complain. What is even more astonishing is that there is a charge to be treated here. One of our own drivers had typhoid a few months ago and was an in-patient. When it was time for him to go home his wife went to fetch him and she was held there while he was sent out to find the $80 needed for his bill. He turned up at our house, in the monsoon rain, distraught, gaunt and looking very, very ill still. He was loaned the money for his bill, of course, which he has since paid back but it is a desperate state of affairs for the vast majority of the population here who live on less that a $1 a day and have no one to turn to for any help.
Being a lucky western woman with travel insurance if I was ill the only place I would ever consider going would be the Angkor International Hospital. This is an outpost of a big, private Thai hospital with first class facilities and a helipad on the roof where you can be medivaced to Bangkok if needs be. It costs the astonishing amount of $3000 per night. Yes, that's right, per night.
As I came out of the main gate I saw a bar opposite offering cocktails with an all day happy hour. If only people knew what was happening just a few yards away. I rushed home, threw all my clothes in the laundry and spent a very long time in the shower thanking God for my good fortune in having been born in Great Britain in the middle of the twentieth century.
Directly across the street from Pub Street is the Siem Reap Referral Hospital. All adults have to be treated here and you are classed as an adult when a young teenager. There are two children's hospitals in town both run by NGO's where treatment and drugs are free. God help the adult Cambodian population if this is their only option. I have passed this place hundreds of times but never ventured in, until today that is. Lori had warned me about it. She told me that if she ever found herself needing to go there for treatment she would pray for death. Having seen it now I would go a step further and just slit my wrists. It is quite a large complex of different buildings surrounded by grassy areas and about a million kilos of rubbish. The filth is quite unbelievable. There is an all pervading sickly smell of decay everywhere. Inmates have to be cared for by relatives. If you have no one you are not cleaned and you starve. There are people lying everywhere, in corridors, outside, on the floor and cheek by jowl in the 'wards'. There is no linen, of course, the sick just lie on mats, if they are lucky to have one brought for them or just on the floor or on a bare metal bed. I saw many lying in their own excrement and vomit, there is blood on the floor and on the walls and rubbish everywhere. I saw no evidence that anything was ever cleaned except for one relative who was sloshing some dirty water over a mat covered in blood and faeces. Many patients have i.v. drips hanging from hooks or just held by relatives The grassy areas are full of family members cooking food and generally just hanging about. The only things not much in evidence were the staff. The whole place felt as if not a soul was actually working there. Government Doctors in Cambodia earn such a pitiful amount that if they did not moonlight elsewhere they would starve. If this is how the State thinks that healthcare should be in this country then heaven help Cambodia.
I could smell the outside latrines long before I saw them. I was wearing a mask, not that it probably did much good. I suppose that people must get better here of course, but it's hard to see how. I have heard stories of people who died in there without any family members to take care of them and no one has noticed for a day or more until other patients start to complain. What is even more astonishing is that there is a charge to be treated here. One of our own drivers had typhoid a few months ago and was an in-patient. When it was time for him to go home his wife went to fetch him and she was held there while he was sent out to find the $80 needed for his bill. He turned up at our house, in the monsoon rain, distraught, gaunt and looking very, very ill still. He was loaned the money for his bill, of course, which he has since paid back but it is a desperate state of affairs for the vast majority of the population here who live on less that a $1 a day and have no one to turn to for any help.
Being a lucky western woman with travel insurance if I was ill the only place I would ever consider going would be the Angkor International Hospital. This is an outpost of a big, private Thai hospital with first class facilities and a helipad on the roof where you can be medivaced to Bangkok if needs be. It costs the astonishing amount of $3000 per night. Yes, that's right, per night.
As I came out of the main gate I saw a bar opposite offering cocktails with an all day happy hour. If only people knew what was happening just a few yards away. I rushed home, threw all my clothes in the laundry and spent a very long time in the shower thanking God for my good fortune in having been born in Great Britain in the middle of the twentieth century.
Comments
Post a Comment