Associated Press Newswires, Feb. 15, 2001
INTERNET BRINGS MEDICINE TO REMOTE CAMBODIAN VILLAGE
By Robert O'Neill
BOSTON (AP) - The Cambodian village of Robib has no doctors,
piped water, electricity or regular telephones.
It is an arduous nine-hour drive from the capital, Phnom Pen, in an
area that only recently emerged from decades of isolation imposed by
the communist Khmer Rouge.
But Thursday, villagers were able to receive medical help via e-mail
from a doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The exchange was the first in a landmark project to bring health
care to one of the poorest corners of Asia by using satellite
Internet.
"The amount of work we can do with this simple technology is
great," said Dr. Joseph C. Kvedar, a director of Partners Telemedicine,
which is working on the program with the Sihanouk Hospital Center of
Hope in Phnom Penh. "Whether you're in Cambodia or Cambridge
you get the same quality of health care."
Partners Telemedicine is a program of Partners Health Care, a
group of hospitals that includes Mass General and Brigham and
Women's Hospital. It allows doctors around the world to consult with
specialists at the hospitals using telecommunications.
It became involved in the project after it was approached by an
American philanthropist, Bernie Krishner, whose projects in Cambodia
also include a newspaper, an orphanage and a rural school-building
project.
Krisher was the organizer of the project, also known as Project
Village Leap.
An Internet link using a satellite phone was set up last year in the
village, which has an average annual per capita income of $37.
Partners Telemedicine is offering its services for free for
several months as the program is developed, but Kvedar said the
project will eventually have to become economically
self-sustainable.
A Cambodian nurse traveled by helicopter from Phnom Penh to Robib
Thursday for the program's first demonstration. In his next monthly
visits the nurse, So Montha, will have to make the long trek by
jeep.
Montha used a digital camera and other testing equipment to record
the information about patients and then transmitted the data via
Internet.
Kvedar was up at 1 a.m. Thursday to follow the demonstration from
the computer in his office. He responded to the cases by e-mailing
his counterparts in Cambodia.
Doctors in Phnom Pen and Boston studied the data of four patients.
Kvedar said other specialists from Partners Telemedicine will
continue to follow up on the patients.
Organizers hope the Robib project will be the first step of a
learning process on how the digital age can benefit developing
countries where neither villagers can visit doctors nor the
specialists come to the villages.
The Internet also has provided children in Robib with
computer skills. Many have e-mail pen pals around the world. A group
of villagers trained in silk weaving are also selling scarves to web
customers from Boston to Tokyo through the village Web site.
"It is expensive for the people of this community to travel to
see a doctor, so they normally do not get illnesses treated,"
said Nuong Kim Chheang, one of the four villagers observed using the
technology. He was found to have lung problems, possibly
tuberculosis.
Most of the village's 5,000 people, who barter vegetables and other
food, obtain remedies from forest herbs, Nuong Kim Chheang said.
Kvedar said he hopes that in the future the program can expand to
include things such as blood tests, which would help address the
area's chronic malaria problem, and eye tests.
Cambodia's Health Minister Hong Sun Huot praised the experiment,
noting that there is a scarcity of doctors in Cambodia, where 80
percent of its 11 million people live in villages.
"We support this kind of innovative program, but we have to
remember reality," Hong Sun Huot said. "We would have to
train many people in rural areas and have many computers in many
places to setup such a network properly and make it useful."
_____________________________________________________
Associated Press reporter Chris Decherd in Cambodia contributed to
this report.
On the Net:
Robib village: http://www.villageleap.com