Sat and Sun 9 and 10 Oct

Dr Beat and Aki Ra: Giving hope

Last Saturday night we attended the Dr Beatocello concert at the local children's hospital. Dr Beat Richner, is the cellist and he runs the hospital. The performance was extraordinary for many reasons.

He plays well a limited repertoire of mournful, solemn Bach which is perfectly suited to the occasion. He engages his audience for 90 minute by playingand explaining why he is in Siem Reap and why he plays the cello.

His main purpose is to outline the problem facing children in Cambodia. They are poor and there is nowhere to help them unless they have money: which they do not. He has been in Siem Reap since 1992 and has helped, he says more than 6 million children with less than 10% of his money coming from the state. The rest is the result of donations at such concerts and elsewhere. His work is phenomenal, he ensures that it is Cambodians who are trained to be doctors, nurses and every member of staff. He insists that everyone earns a good Cambodian wage, as that is the only way he can cut out bribery which is the one of the many forms of corruption in this country.Of the staff of 2460 only three are non Cambodians - himself, the French Head of the Laboratories, and his cello which is Italian! The film shows his meeting with the Swiss President in 2005/6 and she seems to be unable to comprehend the depth of the problem he is dealing with but the scenes of at the hospital tell rather more. It's not chaos, it just that there are so many children, perhaps 1000 per day some of which are admitted and others who need out- patient care need every day - masses of sick, young humanity is hard to take.

Throughout the 'concert' he repeatedly says he is not being political but of course he is and he strives to make the point that western attitudes are killing children. Apparently important people involved in world health issues - WHO, UNICEF, Save the Children etc are saying that Cambodians do not need the best drugs, treatment and so on because once helped they will catch it again, so why waste money. They cannot understand western medical technology so we should only give them simple things. He says that is nonsense and has the death rate of 0.5% that no one treated for TB ever gets it again and the hospital has the best ration of success to cost in the world. Who are we to doubt him?The number of admissions daily is phenomenal, as is the number of day cases, at the moment the main treatments are for Dengue Fever, TB, Japanese Encephalitis, typhoid and others too numerous to mention.In this country unless treated these illnesses either kill or maim for life. His concerts alone raise approx 5.5million dollars a year, but that is a drop in the ocean.In the state hospitals you only get treatment if you can afford to pay the bribe, the same way you progress through education - and of course the people we are working with cannot.

On Sunday we visited more temples and visited The Landmine Museum, which is a small place run by a remarkable Khmer, Aki Ra. He says he is about 40 but does not know for certain. His name is Japanese but all of his life he has lived with other names he does not like. An ex Khmer Rouge child soldier he laid land mines and admits to carrying out various atrocities until he fled to the government side. Now he works with the victims of land mine accidents as well as clearing landmines and training others to do the same in many parts of Cambodia.

The statistics of mines dropped and placed in Cambodia is mind boggling but the effects on individuals is not. Today in town, we 'met' some of them working as book sellers on the streets with books and DVD's for sale. How does one say no all of the time but you cannot support everyone all the time?However, I do need to buy some books to read on my return, however, awful the subject matter.At the museum Aki Ra helps educate children who have been victims and gives them a start in life, once they have lost a limb their families cannot afford to keep them or have knowledge to do so.He is on the CNN list to be Heroes of the Year, but he has been that man to many people for several years already.If you fancy viewing CNN Heroes and voting for him, it won't be a wasted one.