Before open-heart surgery was available at Hebron Hospital, nearly 100 child patients had to travel by plane to Korea for the procedure. Since a year ago, however, medical teams from Yangsan Busan University Hospital and Bundang Seoul University Hospital are visiting Phnom Penh and devoting themselves to this work as a form of short-term mission. Prof. Choi Jeong-yeon of Bundang Seoul University Hospital has worked to establish the heart center at Hebron Hospital. He sends his team every three to four months to conduct surgery, as well as to educate local doctors.
When I visited Hebron Hospital earlier, on July 9, I found Director Kim praying with children who had been waiting months for their turn to get the operation. Before the surgery, Kim visits their homes and helps them stay emotionally stable.
“Our Korean Christian medical staff and volunteers are creating something really difficult to achieve. Before the heart center was set up here, when we brought children to Korea, both the patients and their family members had a tough time in the unfamiliar environment. During the winter, they would catch colds easily, because the weather here is never cold. The recovery rate has risen noticeably since the opening of the center and the start of operations here.”
Hebron Hospital started out as a free-service hospital in 2007. The 17 million population of Cambodia has 90 public hospitals, and the number of doctors per 1,000 persons is 0.2 (1/10 the Korean ratio). Because the facilities of the hospitals are so poor, one cannot expect good quality medical service. One reason for the poor service is that a large number of medical professionals were massacred by the Pol Pot dictatorship in the 1970s. Many persons still rely on individual pharmacies or occultism.
“Around the year 2000, I came here several times on short-term medical mission. I was surprised at the low level of hygiene even in the district hospitals. Many hospitals in the countryside were not even equipped with stethoscopes. When children were sick, the outcome was left to fate.”
At that time, Director Kim was an elder of Chungmu Church in Hoehyeon-dong, Seoul, and was a practicing pediatrician with his own clinic. Up until the present, ever since his graduation from the medical school of Catholic University in Seoul, he has always been with children.
“For some reason, the eyes of the children have remained in my heart each time I returned from medical mission in Cambodia. I came to think that I wouldn’t be able to do anything if I just kept thinking about them. So one day, I locked the doors of my clinic and apartment, and decided, ‘Just go.’’’
So in 2004 he began working at a clinic in downtown Phnom Penh, while drawing up his future plans. Together with a local missionary society in Cambodia, he was able to begin an interdenominational medical mission in 2007. Its small clinic, 1 kilometer distant from Phnom Penh airport, was built on reclaimed wetlands.
Word spread quickly about the “free clinic run by Koreans.” Patients from all over the country lined up for treatment. The surrounding wetlands offered no shade from the sun, but people waited patiently in line. The happiest times for Dr. Kim have been when he was caring for and treating his patients. Kim has held worship services and prayed for them, and has busied himself expanding the clinic, but has never felt tired.
Now Hebron Mission Hospital has become a medical facility visited annually by 50,000 some patients to regain their health. During the past eight years, the hospital has grown to be equipped with 70 beds and three operation rooms. There are nine Korean and nine Cambodian doctors, 35 Korean missionaries and volunteers, and 80 Cambodian staff members.
“Currently we operate a nursing program, and also are praying and preparing to establish a medical school. 130 years ago, we Koreans received the Gospel and new life from medical missionaries to our country. We should repay that grace. I believe I will be able to hand over everything to the local people and go my own way within 15 years. I pray with my whole heart that the devotion of the medical personnel and volunteers here continues, so that it becomes an even better hospital.
(Sponsor: With Hebron Incorp. 070-8624-3390)
Article and photos by senior reporter Jeon Jeonghee (jhjeon@kmib.co.kr), with Yeara Ahn-Park (yap@kmib.co.kr)
Click here for the original article in Korean
