Access to healthcare is a basic human right, yet limited knowledge of health, nutrition and diet in conjunction with lack of facilities, roads and transport means that many people of Pailin Province, Cambodia, are denied this right. Villagers frequently experience acute cases of dengue fever, malaria, malnutrition, infected wounds and abdominal parasites but do not have the means to seek assistance.
In response to the need of local communities the Marist Brothers and lay Marists established a first-aid clinic and sick-bay at the Catholic Church Pastoral Centre, alongside the Marist Education Centre. The project also provided two outreaches per week to rural villages in Pailin Province located 20 km’s outside of Pailin that don’t have any medical services in the village. The end of 2016 saw the conclusion of the health outreach program and has been replaced by a health prevention program, which we are pleased to report has just started. The shift to a prevention program came via observations from the medical doctors in the field who noted that without prevention their work is not totally efficient.
Doctor Sreyleap Moeun proposed that the Brothers organize workshops to explain and train people in order to make them capable of preventing some basic health problems through better hygiene, diet and by taking basic precautions. Doctor Sreyleap has lead the new prevention program which entails a two hour workshop on a Saturday morning for an audience of up to 30 people each time to be held over October, November and December 2017. With the October workshop now complete, we are pleased to report that in excess of 30 people came to the workshop and left with a range of information and and materials to take back to their families in their village.
AMS is pleased to be working in partnership with the Marist Brothers in Pailin and want to thank in particular Brother Georges for his tireless work in Pailin as he now leaves the community in preparation for his next mission in Algeria.