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| Volunteers counted and ziplocked pills. (Photo by Gracie Zheng) |
January 16, 2012
Gracie Zheng
Staff Reporter
Neon Tommy (USC Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism)
A small group of volunteers from St. Mary Medical Center and the non-profit Cambodian Health Professionals
Association of America (CHPAA) packed medicine kits Sunday for a week-long medical mission to Cambodia scheduled for later this month.
Volunteers packaged pills into individual doses, labeled them in English and Khmer, sealed them in boxes and weighed them at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. Medications included antibiotics, vitamins, painkillers, and those for stomach illnesses, diabetes, high blood pressure and parasites.
About 70 volunteers, including 20 physicians and five dentists, are leaving for Cambodia on Jan. 25 to provide free medical and dental care to 5,000 residents of Koh Kong province in southwestern Cambodia and Takeo province in the southeast.
Volunteers are required to take 50 pounds of medicine and pay their own way.
Song Tan, president of CHPAA, initiated the mission in 2011 to bring free medical care to the underserved in his homeland.
“Some of them have never seen a doctor in their life,” he said. “A lot of people there really need dental care."
Tan said this project also gives the volunteers an opportunity to see what life is like in a developing country and do some good for the people.
Part of the medical mission is to provide free prosthetic hands that are capable of holding a pencil, toothbrush and a bicycle.
In Cambodia, amputations are caused by landmines, accidents in factories and fishing with grenades, according to Tan.
Dianne McNinch, 68, a retired school teacher, volunteered as an education director in a free school for poor children in Cambodia from 2001 to 2008.
“It’s a very, very poor country," McNinch said. "A family will earn maybe $30 a month. They have to pay $9 each month for each child to go to public school. There isn’t much money left for food, and certainly not much money left for medical care."
McNinch started her volunteering for CHPAA last week. She is living on Social Security and said she feels she is lucky.
“I have a roof over my head," she said. "I don’t have to worry about food. I’m healthy. That’s one way I can give."
Parsah Roueenfar, 10, helped by putting labels on bags and counting medicine. He is going on the medical mission to Cambodia for the first time with his sister and father next Thursday.
“I know the kids in Cambodia are very ill and sick, most of them," Roueenfar said. "They don’t have much good stuff over there. I really want to help them because it’s kind of sad."
Sokan Hunro, 50, a physician assistant, went on the medical mission to Cambodia in 2011.
He is originally from Cambodia and left the country in the late 1970s before returning for the first time in 1994 with a non-government organization, Adventist Development and Relief Agency, teaching doctors in a Master’s program for public health.
Hunro built a public library and learning center nine years ago in Kampong Cham province to the northeast of the capital Phnom Penh.
A student has to spend $10 to $15 per month to study English at private schools, according to Hunro. They would rather come to his library, sitting on the floor or standing for free English lessons and access to books and computers.
“I just sent two brand-new laptops that I bought on black Friday," Hunro said. "They got there a couple of weeks ago. We have five computers now."
1 comment:
Very good.
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