You will be joining the M.A.D. [Medical Assistance Direct] Rural Children’s Healthcare Project - providing a basic healthcare services to schools, orphanages and children’s centre’s in rural areas of Siem Reap Province, focusing on health education, basic treatments, referrals to a children’s hospital in the town, and the tackling of intestinal worms/parasites.

Good quality healthcare access in rural areas of Siem Reap Province is extremely limited. With healthcare facilities geographically focused along paved roads and population centre’s, the informal fees charged for access to healthcare, and the low incomes of people in rural areas, they are often deprived of access to decent healthcare facilities.

You’ll be working with either one or two Khmer assistants, your tuk tuk driver, and perhaps another volunteer. You will be educating children on a broad range of issues, primarily those identified by the ‘Health Sector Strategic Plan 2003-2007’: Bed-net use, Nutrition education and growth promotion and healthy diet, Mental health, Alcohol, drugs and tobacco, Sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS, Eye care, Safe drinking water and food safety, Vitamin A and iron/folate supplementation and iodine. You’ll be referring children with specific problems to Angkor Children’s Hospital. This helps to relieve the strain on limited healthcare services by serving as a screening service, preventing people who do not need the service from wasting their and the hospitals time and money by using it, and prompting those who do need advanced medical treatment to seek assistance sooner, when the cost of the treatment is lower and the likely effectiveness higher.

The types of treatments that you will be offering will include and generally be limited to treating wounds, minor injuries and/or wounds, antibiotic treatment for chest / throat infections, give reassurance on simple cough/cold symptoms, assess abdominal pains for possible referral, advice re adequate hydration in relation to headache, vigilance with regards to possible abuse and body rashes (possibly dengue fever and malaria).

However, you should not treat this list as exhaustive. Little health infrastructure exists, and you could find yourself faced with some very serious cases. You’ll need to be a specialist generalist, and confident thinking on your feet and working with the bare minimum of resources.

De-worming of the children plays a major part in this program. Intestinal worms are common place in rural Cambodia and are extremely detrimental to children’s health & growth. By providing each child with regular doses of de-worming tablets every three months, we can cost effectively and simply tackle some potential serious health problems.

You should not come on this placement with an expectation that you will save the World, but that said, if you work hard and approach your work with an open mind, you will make a small but hugely valuable difference. This is an ideal opportunity for medical and nursing professionals (including paramedics) to make a real difference.

Typical Working Day

Let us start by emphasizing that there is no ‘typical working day’ on a MaD project. The nature of voluntary work in a developing country is that plans and priorities change at a moment’s notice. Volunteers will generally be working from Monday to Friday, though you may have to be flexible at times. You'll generally start early in the morning and finish mid afternoon - with a small break for lunch in the middle. You'll travel on the MaD medical Tuk Tuk in teams of 2-4 (including khmer staff and other volunteers), visiting schools and children's centres in rural siem reap.