Lighting up Battambang

During a health education session, a young villager brushes his teeth using plaque-staining toothpaste (which stains pink upon contact with plaque and disappears with proper brushing).

Lighting up Battambang

Team members screen villagers at Svey Sissophon. Proper medical intervention is provided to alleviate and improve the current health conditions of the locals. Doctors will attend to people requiring urgent medical attention and dispense medication where possible.

Lighting up Battambang

Dr Sia Ching Hui, with the help of Cambodian medical student Phan Chamroen, examines the patient for ailments. Dr Sia, a houseman with the National University Hospital in Singapore, was one of the seven doctors who joined the mission.

Lighting up Battambang

A young child having an abscess had it drained with the help of Dr. Ong Yew Jin. Due to the lack of medical facilities in the vicinity, the abscess was left untreated and enlarged overtime.

Lighting up Battambang

A villager is sent on a 1.5-hour bus ride to a hospital in Battambang. Doctors refer cases that the screening clinics cannot handle to local healthcare centres.

Lighting up Battambang

Ashley Tan screens young villagers for myopia with the help of a Snellen Eye Chart. The 19-year-old is one of the twelve first-year medical students on the trip. She will lead the Screening Committee in 2014.

Lighting up Battambang

Hair infestation is often the result of infrequent hair washing due to the lack of proper sanitation facilities in the area. At the station, team members wash the heads of villagers with anti-parasite shampoo and remove lice from their heads.

Lighting up Battambang

Drugs are sorted in the morning at the ‘Pharmacy’ station by team members Chamroen Phan, Ek Phanary, Ryan Lee and Joseph Ang. The drugs stocked are purchased with the help of funds raised over the past year.

Lighting up Battambang

Visitors queue to enter Project Battambang's makeshift clinic at a temple in Prey Koup village. Project Directors, Kristabella Low and Joseph Ang, under the mentorship of Dr. Ong, decide these locations during their recce trips.

Lighting up Battambang

Jovina Summer Goh, a first-year medical student plays with a young villager at the end of a work day.

Lighting up Battambang

The project's scholars perform a dance to The Bee Gees' hit "Kung Fu Fighting". Set up in 2011, the Light a Dream Scholarship not only covers the tuition fees of selected students, but also seeks to develop the students holistically.

Lighting up Battambang

One of Project Battambang's team buses waits for the team to pack up at Svey Sissophon village at dusk. On this particular day, the team dealt with an overwhelming load of patients and had to work past daylight with the limited resources available.

Project Battambang is an overseas community project organised by students from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. Every December since 2010, the team comprising 25 students, mentored by Dr Ong Yew Jin, has been going on 2-week long missions to the Thai-Cambodian bordering district of Poipet in the Battambang province of Cambodia.

Located in the northwestern part of the country, Poipet is considered the second poorest district in Cambodia and a common site for drug trafficking, child trafficking and prostitution.

The team’s main focus is to supplement local basic healthcare services by conducting community health screenings and develop sustainable programmes in the long run. Aside from the health screenings, health education sessions are organised to educate villagers on basic health practices such as proper handwashing techniques.

This is accompanied by household surveys and data analyses, which are done to procure information about the needs of the community.

Besides these, Project Battambang also supports the education of needy students and development of village schools in the area with the ‘Light A Dream’ scholarship and teacher-support programmes.

To ensure long-term sustainability, the team works alongside several local contacts including the Missionary Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, villages and schools in the region, as well as local healthcare providers.

Today, Project Battambang reaches out to a total of nine different communities. Through new partnerships and collaborations, it aims to develop local health support infrastructure in villages and grow its scholarship programme in schools.

“It is a different Poipet in my eyes,” said Kristabella Low, a second-year medical student and Project Director of Project Battambang 2012. “It is not the armpit of Cambodia and a land of sprawling fields with uncleared landmines, but a home in my heart where hope is born.”

“There was no sense of me being someone who was there to help the less fortunate,” added Jovina Summer Goh, a first-year medical student. “Instead I felt like I was on the receiving end of kindness from the Cambodians.”

Interested readers can visit to www.facebook.com/ProjectBattambang or www.projectbattambang.com for more information on the project.

This article first appeared as part of the original Be An Idea content platform on social impact. While Be An Idea has evolved into something different, we still respect our roots in social impact and have archived this article under the category Be An Idea Magazine.