This week’s SoroptiVoice Blog comes from Sarvina Kang, 24, from
Cambodia. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Development Management at Norton
University, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She joined the SIPP since June 2010 before the
chartered day on July 4th 2010.  Here she describes SI Phnom Pehn’s breast cancer awareness programme.

I am a Cambodian correspondent for World Pulse
Organization and Safe World for Women. I am so honored and privileged to be
selected as a candidate to represent the youth of my country in
the conference One Young World taking place in September, 2011 in Zurich,
Switzerland. Also, I have been selected as an award-winner for the US Media
and Speaking Tour among the many countries who applied for 2010 Voices of Our
Future Program – It is a New Media, Citizen Journalism and Empowerment Program.

Soroptimist International Phnom Penh is
taking a project of breast cancer awareness. We are working to address awareness issues and help
to raise hope in women and girls in Cambodia. It is my desire to
see peace in Cambodia and also a world where each person has access to clean
water, food, health care and education. Illiteracy is at its peak in Cambodia
because it is a developing country. Since I also was born in a poor family, when we had an illness we often had no hope to be treated when I was a child – I
always tried to study hard and told myself to be strong and to struggle for a better life. Having
struggled in life for being female and poor, I am driven by a passion for
women and girls. That is the reason why I joined Soroptimist International
Phnom Penh, transforming the
lives of women and girls around the world to improve their living conditions.

 

Breast cancer awareness is very impotant to me as a Soroptimist. Many health
facilities around the country were completely destroyed, often deliberately, during
Cambodia’s years of conflict. Even today, many parts of
Cambodia still have no health facilities, and in other places facilities are
too dilapidated to be of any use. Yet despite these handicaps, the government
has taken concrete steps to reconstruct and revitalise the public health system.

High costs of health services,
low house-hold incomes, limited education, and inadequate access to health
facilities and to health personnel are all important factors in explaining the
low use of health services by poor Cambodians. The cost of health care – measured
by health spending per capita relative to household spending per capita on
nonfood items- is much greater for the poor than for the non-poor. One
outpatient visit to a community clinic or district health center would use up
half of all nonfood spending for someone in the poorest quintile.

Moreover, there is no formal and
transparent mechanism for exempting the poor from user fees. For them, health
care is simply unaffordable. The poor also have less immediate physical access
to health facilities than the non-poor. Moreover, the poor have to travel much
longer distances to all types of health facilities than the better-off when no
health provider is available in their home village.

Breast cancer is
ranked the number 2 health problem in Cambodia according to Dr. Preap Ley, a Doctor from Sihanouk
Hospital, Center of Hope. This is because the women who have breast cancer receive a diagnosis too late to be cured in 80% of cases. Most of them are from part of poor rural areas in Cambodia.

The
World Bank states that 35% of Cambodia’s population of around 15 million exists
on less than $0.50 USD per day. Moreover, an alarming number of Cambodian women
die every year due to a lack of public awareness, limited cancer screening
opportunities and the high cost of treatment. Offering the rural poor population
of Cambodia free services is critical because the exorbitant cost of cancer
care often prevents cancer patients from seeking treatment. To advance this, SIPP have conducted workshops, seminars and trainings to many students at
Norton University and villages to women, girls, and also men to raise awareness of breast
cancer.