These days I am on assignment at the Handicap International Rehabilitation Center in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Apart from physiotherapy and the production and repair of equipment, the centers offer patients a social follow-up. Amongst these patients, there is obviously a large number of mines victims, but the centers welcome a wide diversity of people and types of disabilities, and even offer specific services to children suffering from cerebral palsy and babies suffering from clubfoot.
Today still, Cambodia remains amongst the countries more severely affected by the problem of mines and unexploded ordnance, both for the number of victims and in terms of contaminated surface. Since 1979, more than 60,000 people have either died or been wounded by these weapons, leading to 19,000 deaths and causing around 9,000 amputations.
Today, there are on average four deaths and 75 people wounded every day on Cambodian roads. 46% of wounds recorded in the country are caused by road accidents, making it the first cause of disabilities with young people under 17. This alarming data had to result in a reaction.
Source: Handicap International Cambodia
The long term lack of vaccination during and after the war and the consequences of Agent Orange would appear to be responsible for congenital disorders in Cambodia.
Agent Orange was the code name for the US military's herbicide, developed to destroy the foliage that offered a natural camouflage and protective canopy for communist troops fighting the US during the war in Vietnam.Cambodia and Laos were also targets of Agent Orange, though to a much lesser extent than Vietnam. As a result, far less is known about the environmental and human costs of defoliant use in both these countries.
Agent Orange was the code name for the US military's herbicide, developed to destroy the foliage that offered a natural camouflage and protective canopy for communist troops fighting the US during the war in Vietnam.Cambodia and Laos were also targets of Agent Orange, though to a much lesser extent than Vietnam. As a result, far less is known about the environmental and human costs of defoliant use in both these countries.
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