Living in the city with the largest medical center in the world, we have come to expect timely and appropriate medical treatment as soon as we dial 911. After all, the Texas Medical Center contains 21 hospitals. More heart surgeries are performed there than anywhere else in the world. One of its 5,000 physicians delivers a baby every 20 minutes or begins a surgery every 3 minutes.
In 1979, a 4 year genocide ended in Cambodia. Almost 2 million people, 25% of the country’s population, were massacred while only 45 medical doctors survived. In 1996, the Sihanouk Hospital Center of HOPE sought to re-establish the nation’s health care system. Today, this hospital in the capital city of Phnom Penh provides a wide range of services and abundant medical training for Cambodians. However, in southern Cambodia, there were little to no medical services for women and children as of 2012. Therefore, the Sonja Kill Memorial Hospital was established to provide quality care for children and expectant mothers, regardless of their ability to pay.
Your donations will be used to provide treatments for children in a country where child mortality is among the highest in Asia, where 9 out of 100 children do not reach their 5th birthday, and where thousands of children die every year from tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever, respiratory infections, and diarrheal diseases because there is no adequate treatment available to them. In the entire coastal region of southern Cambodia, there is not a single pediatric hospital while well-trained pediatricians are missing also. The hospital is actively seeking support from international donor organizations, private foundations, corporate companies, and philanthropic individuals. Severely sick children in Cambodia and their desperate families cannot wait. Will you be able to help?
Students at the C. T. Bauer College of Business, along with their sponsor Dr. Larry Hill of the Graduate School of Social Work, at the University of Houston are partnering with the nonprofit Medical Bridges to ship custom boxes of critical medical supplies to Sonja Kill Memorial Hospital. If sufficient funds are collected, the students will travel to the hospital with multiple containers of supplies as this is the most efficient way to ensure the greatest amount of aid possible promptly reaches the hospital.
You can support our campaign by spreading the word! Share us on Facebook, or even tweet our LaunchGood to your followers to show the public exactly what The Cambodia Initiative is really about. Everyone can make a difference. Together we can all make sure that the citizens of Kampot, Cambodia get the right medical attention they deserve.