Red Cross Blogs

‘First aid’ Cambodian style

By Alix Miller
April 15, 2009 at 2:03 pm

A year ago while volunteering in Cambodia, I found myself carefully removing a makeshift dressing from a young boy’s deeply cut foot, which was made from, of all things, tree leaves.

With no money for or access to proper bandages, many residents of Sihanoukville, where I was staying, apply wads of foliage to cuts in the hope they will heal and not get infected and turn septic.

I regularly found myself removing these and applying proper bandages to numerous wounds during the two months I spent at a tiny local charity called the Cambodian Children’s Painting Project. Together with other volunteers, I was looking after poor local children at the project’s centre.

Most of the kids I worked with had no shoes but instead scampered around barefoot in and around the project centre and on the beach. This fact, combined with non-existent formal rubbish disposal in the area, and the explosion of beach bars and tourism, makes for a lethal cocktail.

Litter scars the entire town and coastline and at any one time, there are thousands of broken bottles, discarded lighters and even cutlery amongst other things lying around.

Unsurprisingly, we volunteers were inundated by numerous cuts to tiny feet as a result. Having had no formal first aid training, in an environment where medical services are threadbare, my work was challenging. All I could do was clean and disinfect cuts and apply dressings and bandages in a haphazard way, and hope for the best.

Apart from the cuts to feet, one day a boy fell hard while playing and banged his head hard on the granite floor. He cried, and then went quiet, looking very faint. Without any knowledge of the Khmer language I couldn’t question him, but I was terrified that he had done some serious damage, was bleeding internally and that his injuries could be life-threatening.

Everyone else at the project centre was convinced he was ok, and mercifully they were right. He turned up a few days later with a smile on his face and spring in his step. However, that experience made me resolve to train in first aid.

Luckily, working at the Red Cross, one of the UK’s biggest first aid training providers, I’m in the perfect place to do so. I have signed up for a one-day Save a Life course to learn the basics…why don’t you too?

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Tags: Cambodia, first aid training

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