Robib Census

Robib is one of six villages in the district of Rovieng, Preah Vihear. It is where the Hironaka School is located, which  enrolls students from all six villages.

Our Cambodian staff of teachers at the Hironaka School  recently took a survey of all the families in Robib to determine the main occupation, income, family size, number of children and a determination of their financial ability to pay for medical care. All the families in this survey are eligible to participate in our pilot telemedicine project (see TELEMEDICINE). Once a month a nurse from the Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope in Phnom Penh and David Robertson, on leave from the MIT Media Laboratory, who volunteered to establish and run this project,  travel to Robib for four days to examine patients from the village.

They then transmit their findings via the Internet, with digital photo attachments, to the charity Sihanouk Hospital and  to Dr. Joseph Kvedar of Telepartners at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for diagnosis and evaluation. Based on the findings transmitted back to Robib within hours, the patients are taken to the Kompong Thom Provincial Hospital (two hours away) or to Phnom Penh, the capital, six to eight hours' distant,  if the case is serious. 

The costs for transportation and treatment are subsidized  from the profit proceeds of the sale of the silk scarves produced in Robib (see ROBIB PRODUCTS) and profits from the pig farm which was also established from the scarf proceeds.

The census is used to establish the financial status of patients and to determine to what degree their treatment should be subsidized. In most cases it is a 100 percent subsidy. Where patients have some financial  resources they may be asked to pay from 20 to 50 percent of the costs, or the full amount.

Patients from other villages are able to receive the free telemedicine examination and diagnosis but must finance their own medical care costs because sufficient funding to expand the coverage to patients not residing in Robib is not available at this time.

The income figures are in riel, the local currency. The prevail exchange rate is: $1.00 = 3970 riel.

OCCUPATION, FAMILY AND INCOME SURVEY OF ROBIB VILLAGE