Thmar Pouk Referral Hospital

Situated circa 50kms from the main provincial town of Sisophon, Thmar pouk is a level 1 referral hospital serving a rural and mainly poorer agricultural community. The history of the hospital is that it was developed following the civil strife with the support of MSF. Thmar Pouk is one of the places in Cambodia where civil unrest continued until the late 1990’s! The Hospital has poor infrastructure, lacking basic amenities such as running water and electricity! Water is bought from a water seller who draws it from a pond, and if needed at night, electricity is provided from a generator ! But the hospital staff do a good job in-spite of the very difficult circumstances which they work in. Most of the staff trained in the refugee camps across the border in Thailand, and have recently been retrained either in Phnom Penh (doctors) or Battambang (nurses). There is a new Director reappointed following his graduation from retraining in Phnom Penh, and he has good ideas about the direction he wants the hospital to go in. I am spending time here in Thmar Pouk getting to know the staff and trying to grasp the complex system of MOH, Operational District and Provincial District management system which both Thmar Pouk and Mongkol Borei operate with in.
For both hospitals, it is a challenge to see children and adults admitted on a daily basis with conditions or accidents that have a major impact on lives, and yet simple interventions could make a huge change. For example, very few people wear helmets when riding mottos (mopeds), and yet road traffic accidents account for a large percentage of all traumatic accidents and deaths for both adults and children. It is not uncommon to see a whole family riding on one motto! What an impact wearing helmets and a maximum of two people to one motto would have on the number of accidents and death rates!