Succession of Sicknesses

So a big part of living here is managing your own health while in a different setting, with different climate, facilities, and hygiene. In the dryer months Cambodia is dus-ty! I'm guessing (?)accounting partly for the high rates of respiratory illness (20.6% of deaths of children under 5 are from pneumonia, the single biggest cause of death contributing to the under 5 mortality rate of 143 per 1000 (compared to Australia's 1.2% caused by pneumonia of its rate of 6 per 1000 deaths under 5) (WHO 2000 and 2005).

Living here you are most commonly faced with colds, and stomach complaints. These are discussed enthusiastically around the dinner table in intricate detail as your medicine/rest/food/drink regime for battling your complaint is established, assessed and rechecked.

Unfortunately one of the first things to go regardless of complaint, for me at least, is Dop's wonderful cafe dtk do kow dgo (ice coffee) at the Haang Cafe (coffee shop). Delicious, but a little strong on stomachs, and bad for colds with it's inch of thick sweetened condensed milk - very close the consistency of the body fluids you are trying to reduce!! oh yeah, fair call, too much detail.

But dehydration is definitely a biggie here. Since I have been here, two volunteers have been down really hard with dehydration and complications. Both with intense multiple day headaches, and severe vomiting. Week long illness plus convalescence. Countless bags of IV fluid were given them, and on one occasion two trips to the hospital to ensure it wasn't something far worse.

So fair call when Mum and Dad ask each time we speak, how is your health? It is usually pretty good, but occasionally, for some, can be pretty scary.

Apart from all the stories of dislocated shoulders from moto accidents (it seems everyone I meet who has ridden one has at some stage injured a shoulder), emergency trips to airports to get to Thailand for appendicitis....there are the ones that keep us all amused...like...

Strange and undiagnosable.... arm butterfly infections (?!).

Descriptions of evacuating intestinal worms a foot long.... moto burns (apparently all Cambodians and I guess South-East Asians have a scar in that same spot on the calf to prove that you are in moto world...being recently branded I have been told I am officially 'in'.)

So health is sometimes difficult to come by in Cambodia regardless of your situation...the contrast is strong though, that as expats, with health insurance, we know it is only a matter of money, or flights, between us and sound treatment. The frustration and the heartbreak comes when we consider how an average Cambodian would cope with the more serious of complaints.