Associated Press, Feb. 15, 2001
INTERNET BRINGS MEDICINE TO REMOTE CAMBODIAN VILLAGE
By CHRIS DECHERD
ROBIB, Cambodia (AP) - Patients in this remote village
received medical help Thursday from doctors in the United States in
a landmark project to bring health care to one of the poorest
corners of Asia by using satellite Internet.
A Cambodian nurse traveled from the capital, Phnom Penh, to Robib
where he used a digital camera and other testing equipment to record
the information about patients. He transmitted the data via Internet
to doctors in Phnom Penh and Boston, Massachusetts, to launch
Cambodia's first telemedicine project.
The monthly program will be run by the Sihanouk Hospital Center of
Hope in Phnom Penh, and the American company, Telepartners, which is
staffed by specialists from Massachusetts General Hospital and
Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Doctors at both institutions studied the data of four patients, and
Dr. Joseph Kvedar of Massachusetts General responded within an hour
to the case of the first patient, Noung Kim Chheang, 48, who has
lung problems. Kvedar said he suspects tuberculosis.
"It is expensive for the people of this community to travel to
see a doctor, so they normally do not get illnesses treated,"
Nuong Kim Chheang said.
Most of the village's 5,000 people, who barter vegetables and other
food, obtain remedies from forest herbs, he said.
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.
On Thursday, the nurse, So Montha, flew in a helicopter to Robib,
170 kilometers (104 miles) from Phnom Penh. From next month, he will
undertake an arduous nine-hour journey by jeep every month to Robib.
The town only recently emerged from decades of isolation imposed by
the communist Khmer Rouge, who once ruled Cambodia and retained
control over many rural areas for many more years after their ouster
in 1979.
An Internet link using a satellite phone was set up last year in the
village, which has no doctors, piped water, electricity or regular
telephones. Its average annual per capita income is dlrs 37.
However, the Internet 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
website. The
Robib medical project was funded by an American
philanthropist, Bernie Krishner, whose projects in Cambodia include
a newspaper, an orphanage and a rural school-building project.
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."