CAMBODIA Catholic Church Provides Health Care Center For Poor And Sick

Posted: 14th March 2006

Sister Verniar Erang and a patient in the Health Care Center

PHNOM PENH (UCAN) -- Chhel Plouch, a Buddhist, was still coughing as he sat in a bed in a Catholic church compound, but he was happier knowing that he had found both care and welcome.

Chhel had arrived at the Temporary Care Center run by St. Joseph Church in Phnom Penh. The center is a room with 10 beds and mosquito nets for each.

It was his first day at the center, he said, after traveling a long way from his home in Kampot province, 150 kilometers southwest of the capital. But already he had found that the Catholics who run the center did not discriminate against him because he was a Buddhist. In fact, he told UCA News, the nuns at the center were taking care of him affectionately.

"They warmly welcomed me. That makes me happy," the gaunt 33-year-old man said.

Another patient, 70-year-old Teng Yav, who comes from Chhomkiri, also Chhel's home district, told UCA News, "The Catholic Church helps people whether they believe in Jesus or not." Teng said he believed the Church helps all people who are poor, like him, an old man with no place to stay.

Paris Foreign Missions Father Bob Piche, parish priest of St. Joseph's, has the same idea. "We want to help all people who are sad, ill, weak, and those who can't work," he told UCA News. Tending to the sick, he said, is a mission mandated by Christ.

The Temporary Care Center is the biggest of its kind in the Cambodian Church, according to Church sources.

Nonetheless, Sister Verniar Erang, who helps at the center, told UCA News that unlike God's love, the center has limitations and so must set limits.

The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul nun explained that the center only accepts people who bring a recommendation letter from the parish priest where they live. It will make an exception, she said, in the case of someone who is seriously ill, but will have the person admitted to a public hospital as soon as possible.

Since the center has no doctors, it must send all seriously ill patients to the hospital. It also sends people to the hospital for medical examinations. What it does provide, free of charge, is general care and medicine -- but only for a week.

After a week, Sister Erang explained, a person will be sent home with medicine to continue taking, if necessary. Anyone who runs out of the medicine can come back to the center to get some more, she added.

According to the nun, people come to the center from almost everywhere in the country where the Church has a presence.

The center's records show that in the past three months, it took in 500 people and spent US$1,800 per month for their food, hospital expenses, medicine and transportation.

Sister Erang said they get medicine from an international charity association in Thailand, which sends them medicine and vitamin supplements twice a year, as well as regular shipments from France and Singapore.

Donations from overseas make the center's work possible, according to Father Piche, who said most of the donations come from France, Hong Kong and Japan.

"We started this project to help the sick and poor since 1991 or 1992, when Bishop Emile (Destombes, vicar of Phnom Penh) came to Cambodia after the war and commissioned the Church to help sick people here," he added.

The local Church still is struggling to rebuild itself after the devastating civil war in the first half of the 1970s and the brutality of the communist regime led by Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979. Under the Khmer Rouge, all seven native Cambodian priests and all native Religious nuns in the country lost their lives. Estimates of the number of people who did not survive the four-year reign of terror run from 500,000 to 2 million.

Since 1989, the Church in Cambodia has been experiencing a revival, as has religion in general.

Phnom Penh vicariate and Battambang and Kompong Cham prefectures together have five native Cambodian priests among the 50 active priests in the country. Church statistics count 19,000 Catholics among Cambodia's 12 million people, more than 90 percent of whom are Buddhists. Vicariates and prefectures are ecclesiastical jurisdictions in mission regions where the Church structure is not fully organized.

Article Source: C.S.C and UCANEWS