Construction Up-Date 2

The father of one of our workers passed away in the beginning of February. Since all our workers belong to the same community, they all left the construction site, in order to help with the funeral. We had no choice but to leave the building site idle for an entire week.The work has now resumed and we are about to put on the roof.


We are planning to organize an opening ceremony on March 23rd, 2009 with GRAPHIS and SIDE-BY-SIDE INTERNATIONAL, the main donors of the health center. We have only one month left…..

The Road Branch to the Health Center is opened!

At the end of January 2009, the repair works on the road branching out from Road No. 4 to the Graphis Health Center were completed. It was a very rough rock littered dirt road overgrown with grass, which made access to the Health Center difficult and dangerous.

Thanks to the support from the local authorities and from the main donor, GRAPHIS, a Japanese students group, we could manage to repair this road section in three weeks!

The local authorities contributed heavy machinery and workforce for 3 weeks. GRAPHIS provided the funds needed to cover all the costs, including fuel, food for the works and other costs.

It now takes just 5 minutes to access the health center from National Road No. 4, instead of half an hour.



There is still more work to do in order to keep the road smooth throughout the year. As it is not paved, we are planning to cover it with tiny red stones that will act as gravel to prevent it from becoming slippery when wet.



We dug a ditch on both sides of the road. During the rainy season, the ditch will work as drainage. In the dry season, we will fill the ditches with water, to be used by the villagers.
We also plan to raise fish in the ditches. It will be a valuable source of proteins for the people of this area who rarely have opportunity to obtain it.
The ditches will be connected, to keep water moving and prevent it from becoming a breeding ground for malaria-spreading mosquitoes.

Mobile Antenatal and Mother and Child Clinic

We conducted a Mobile Clinic around the villages between January 21st and 26th, 2009, for expecting women, nursing mothers and children, in collaboration with a Japanese midwife nurse and medical staff from Kompong Seila District health center.

This project was made possible thanks to the generous funding by OHDAKE Foundation through the NGO Side By Side International.

The mobile clinic toured four villages and provided health check and medical treatment for over 120 outpatients.

There are many villages located very far from any health institute. When we visited these villages, we met many pregnant women who had never attended antenatal clinic before. We did basic check-ups, distributed iron tablets and provided consultation services and medical advice.

Our objectives for this mobile clinic attempt were three-fold:

1. To provide health care to economically or geographically vulnerable pregnant women
2. To collect medical data while touring the villages, in order to help Graphis Health Center better assess the situation and needs of the local population.
3. To establish an effective communication and collaboration network with Kompong Seila District’s Health Center, which is currently the largest public health institute in the district.
   

The Road to the Health Center

The Graphis Health Center currently under construction is located 8 km from the National Road No. 4.

Why didn’t we build the health center along the National Road itself?

The main reason is we didn’t want to create additional accidents from more traffic that the health center would inevitably generate. Once the health center opens, it would inevitably attract many people, coming in and out of the center, walking across the road, erecting food stalls around and so on. If the health center were located along the already busy and accident-heavy National Road No. 4, it would become an additional cause of traffic accidents.

We decided therefore to build the center a little bit away from the main road, but not too far so as to be able to drive emergency patients quickly from the main road.

Up till now, the existing road branching out from National Road No. 4 to the health center was quite rough. It took at least 25 minutes to drive from the main road to the health center on this dirt road.

Now, with the support from GRAPHIS, a Japanese students group, as well as from local authorities, we have started to repair the road section to the health center, to ensure quicker and safe access.

Local authorities are providing heavy machinery such as excavators, shovel car and trucks, as well as workers. GRAPHIS provided the funds to cover all the costs, including fuel, workers’ food and other expenses.

Thanks to their generous contribution, we have started the repair work of the road section on December 23, 2008.

Once the road repair is completed, travel time from National Road No. 4 to the health center will be reduced from 25 minutes to only 5 minutes!

Introduction: Handmade Back Board

When you are injured in an accident, it is crucial if your neck is fixed while you are rescued from the scene of accident. If you get damage on your neck and people move you without fixing your neck, you may get additional damage or, in the worst case, it kills you.



The back board is one of the rescue tools which can make a patient's body be fixed and stable during evacuation and transferring by an ambulance.



The back board is currently not available in Cambodia; we need to import it from outside. It costs around few hundred dollars if you purchase a back board in some countries like USA, Japan etc. We decided to produce handmade back boards in collaboration with TICO Cambodia. We provide piece of woods and TICO Cambodia make back board from them.

[Handmade back board (Left); photo taken at TICO Cambodia Office]

It cannot last long compare to the plasitic commercially produced ones. But our handmade back boards already saved many victims from accidents.

Introduction: Community Ambulance

Today, we would like to introduce Medic 42, our community ambulance.

There was a so-called "Ambulance" in the community. We heard it was a donation from a Rotary Club. Unfortunately, community didn't have proper management system to maintain this ambulance.


When this ambulance was seriously broken and nobody in the community could cover the cost for repair, we suggested that we can pay for the cost but we would like to supervise the management of this ambulance. Since then, we have been keeping our eyes on this ambulance so that the ambulance is properly maintained and used as "Ambulance" but not for any other purpose. We have also been paying for ambulance driver's salary.

[Community Ambulance; Before TICO's modification]

It used to equip a stretcher only. We could transfer patients but could not do much to keep patients stable. TICO, a Japanese NGO, our good partner in Cambodia, modified and equipped this community ambulance with necessary Basic Life Suport equipment in this year. Now we can provide at least basic prehospital care before and during transferring patient to a hospital.

[It used to be like this; had only stretcher]

[Now our community ambulance can provide Basic Life Support]

Our Health Center has not yet started operation, but we have been transferring number of patients from our area to Phnom Penh.

Since we started cooperation with TICO, we have been working together on patients' transfer from National Road No.4, where our site locates, to Phnom Penh. It takes at least 1 hour in emergency drive from our area to Phnom Penh. If we transfer a patient to Phnom Penh by our ambulance, we cannot respond to any other case for next 2 hours. There is no other ambulance available in 30 km radious of our area. Also, fuel cost for 2 hours round trip was a big burden.


In order to minimize those negative factors, TICO and we established link-up system. When we receive a patient, we communicate with TICO and TICO arrange a public ambulance in Phnom Penh and it comes along the National Road No.4 towards our area. We meet in the halfway point and pass the patient to the ambulance from Phnom Penh.

[Working together with TICO "Life Saving Project" team]

In this way, we can share the travel distance and travel cost. We can return to the base within an hour and can prepare for the next response. Cooperation with public ambulances through TICO "Life Saving Project" significantly ameliorate Emergency Medical Response along National Road No.4.

Emergency Medical Response System in Phnom Penh City is currently dramatically improved with the effort of Cambodian Government and also guidance from TICO. Now we can communicate with Phnom Penh City Emergency Call Center and they dispatch appropriate public ambulance from Phnom Penh.

After our Health Center starts operation, we will be able to improve our emergency medical response system more.

Construction up-date

From May till November, Cambodia is rainy season. We could not do much on the construction of the Health Center.

We have finished columns and connected them on the ground.

We made columns 1.5 times thicker than Cambodian current standard. In Phnom Penh, lots of construction work is going on (now slow down because of global economic crisis) but many of them are poor quality.

We don't want our Health Center having crack in the walls or any other inevitable damage within few years.

We are monitoring progress in every stage carefully.

Unfortunately, we had too much rain in October / November and it washed cement away from the last two columns before it dried. We needed to demolish those two columns because it's too sandy and not solid enough. After this, we decided to stop construction until rain stops.

Now, we enter dry season and we are ready to catch up with construction schedule!

Community is looking forward to seeing the Health Center starts operataion. Also, GRAPHIS, the donor of the Health Center is coming to celebrate the Health Center Opening Ceremony. We need to complete the construction by March 2009!!!