However, since the area locates along the National Road No.4, which connects Phnom Penh and Sehanouk Ville, the international sea port and tourist area, a number of cars and big trucks are travelling everyday and consequently lots of traffic accidents happen.
As Cambodian economy grows, the number of vehicles increase day by day. People's behaviour have not caught up with this change. Cambodia has currently the highest road traffic fatality rate (number of fatalities / 10,000 vehicles) in the ASEAN Region.
[Photo; National Road No.4]
Many accidents happened within a 30km radius of the Health Center Site. The area is mountainous and the road has many curved sections. It is also equal distance to Koh Kong, Kompong Som and Kampot. These provincial capitals do not have proper facilities to handle serious trauma patients. As a result, all trauma victims need to be transported to Phnom Penh.
Often, trauma patients are transported by normal cars, motorbikes or tuk tuk (motorbike with a carriage) but not by ambulances with proper pre-hospital care. It takes 3 to 8 hours in the worst case to reach a hospital in Phnom Penh.
We have been providing ambulance services whenever we receive information of accidents in the area and transported victims to Phnom Penh by an ambulance which has a Basic Life Support facility. However, because of this long distance drive, we cannot always save lives. A trauma victim has a better chance of survival if we can stabilize them before being transported to Phnom Penh or Provincial Hospital.
The Health Center will operate as a 24 hours trauma care center and trauma victims who require stabilization before being transferred to Phnom Penh will be able to be treated here. Of course, if injury level is treatable, victims don't need to be transferred to Phnom Penh but are treated at the Health Center.
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