Banteay Sleak Community Medical Clinic

This clinic is a partnership between CamKids (which funds all of the costs), One-2-One (which provides the services) and the Community to improve the health status of the poor in this slum and to improve the general standard of health of the poor in this area. Moreover, it seeks active participation of the community, so that it can educate inform and empower the community to understand basic health issues and basic hygiene. CamKids and One-2-One established a similar clinic at Canalside over a year ago and the improvements in the health of the children and adults at that site has been extraordinary.

Banteay Sleak Community Clinic is set up on the road of 434 in the Chamkar Morn district of Phnom Penh. This slum community has 288 families from various locations around Cambodia. Most of people in this village have not had any education about health matters and most of them have no chance to go to school. Hygiene is extremely poor - the community doesn’t have enough lavatories because they don’t have enough money or any land to build them and only 20 to 30 families who can afford to use electricity. They live in a very poor condition with poor hygiene, contaminated spoiled food and no clean water. Most pregnant women don’t have antenatal care and give birth at home because they are so poor and don’t know where to go to check up on their health. Most of the adults work in labouring / construction or rubbish collection and recycling. Their daily income is $1.5 to 2.5 dollars per day £30-45 per month), to look after and feed their whole family.

Two teams carry out the Medical work – a medical and a nursing team. The medical clinic is divided into three stations - Triage station, Consultation station and Pharmacy station. Each station has its own tasks. The Triage station is the place for patient registration, measuring (weight, blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rate) and finding out the main problems. At the Consultation station, the medical doctor or senior medical student starts to find and record the important facts such as history of presenting illness (HPI), Past Medical History (PMH), Medication , Allergy, Family History (FH), Social History(SH), Review of System(ROS), Physical Examination(PE), Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment. The Pharmacy station is responsible for providing the medication and instructions on how to take the prescribed medication, so that we can be sure that patient understand and can follow the advice.

The nursing team provides health education and much needed public health measures to the villagers and children. Managing many, many wounds which is a major part of life in the slum, when dwellers are working in bare foot. Injury and trauma is an every day life event as they are working in high risk area like construction sites and picking up and recycling rubbish.

Banteay Sleak Community Clinic started in April 2012. We see a lot of children and adults with many illnesses and wounds, along with skin problems like scabies and lice. Our team will continue to look for locations to set up the clinic so that when the rainy season comes, we will be able to continue our work. We are planning a MOBILE dental service for this community, to start on the 9th May. Once the clinic has been established for a few months, we intend to implement another program here, run as a partnership between One-2-One and CamKids, called Cambodia Smiles, so that mothers of young children under the age of 5 are targeted for special oral health education and training to improve oral health of the children as they grow.