Written by United Planet volunteer Jennifer Hicks on her trip in Siem Reap, Cambodia

Anthony, Theresa, and I went to a concert in the evening. I got in the tuk tuk thinking we were going to some free concert like the one Val, Ta, and I went to, but I got there and realized it was a classical cello concert!

The concert was really great. The cellist was Beat Richner, who has opened four children’s hospitals in Cambodia, three in Phnom Penh, and one in Siem Reap (I bicycle past it twice every day). The hospitals are completely free for children 12 and under and they save 85,000 lives every year. While Richner rotated playing and talking I learned some sombering facts:
- 65% of Cambodians (all ages) have tuberculosis
- 85% of Cambodians make 50 cents a day
- JEV (Japanese Encephalitus Virus) vaccinations aren’t allowed in Cambodia
- Until 1992 most modern vaccines weren’t brought to Cambodia because it was thought that because the people are so uneducated, they wouldn’t understand how to administer medications

Richner said something else that I really liked, “The high mortality rate of the poor is not caused because of poverty. The mortality rate is caused by discrimination against the poor.”

The hospital is free for all children 12 and under and families who have to travel very far to get to the hospital are also compensated for gasoline on their trip. The hospital delivers about fifty babies a day, performs sixty surgeries, and has lowered its mortality rate from 6% to 0.5% in just 17 years. And, no child is rejected. After all I have learned, I have an entirely new appreciation for the hospital. There are lines a mile long every day comprised of families with sick children waiting for their number to be called. What an incredible thing Richner is doing.

The free cello concert is something that he started years ago in order to raise money for the hospital. Two million dollars are donated every year by the Cambodian government, three million by the Swiss government where Richner is from, and the rest of the funding comes from private donations. It costs around 80 million every year to run the hospitals and his cello concerts, alone, raise eight million each year. I thought his story was incredible and I bought his classical cello CD to listen to while I study in college.

To read more about Jen’s trip to Cambodia check out her blog at http://jensgapyear.blogspot.com/.

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• Life on a Lake: A Glimpse of Cambodia

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Asia, Foreign Culture, United Planet, Volunteer Story. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.