A special guest post from Battambang, Cambodia by Dr. Gary Barth, ophthalmologist and Seva volunteer During a lifetime as a physician and a son of a physician, I have heard many stories about the challenges of getting a medical education. None of them, however, compare with the story from Dr. Heng Ton, my newest physician friend in Cambodia. Read his story and think about whether or not you would have passed the language challenges and persistency requirements to become a surgeon in Cambodia!

Dr Gary Barth and Dr. Ton in Battambang Cambodia

Dr. Ton is a 40-year-old from western Cambodia. He grew up as a child during the horrific Pol Pot Regime. During that almost 4-year period, the number of physicians in Cambodia dropped from 40,000 to 4,000. At the end of the Pol Pot Regime there was only one ophthalmologist left in the country. Under the harsh mandates of the Khmer Rouge, teachers, students and even Cambodians wearing glasses were singled out for killing. Schools were closed and the childhood acquisition of a second language was impossible. When the schools were reopened, Dr. Ton received a scholarship to study at Phnom Penh University for a 6-year college/medical school degree. One ironic problem was that the education in Phnom Penh was in French as were all the textbooks, although, French had not been taught in Cambodia since 1975. Even more confounding, the Vietnamese rulers who deposed Pol Pot had outlawed the teaching of French and English, allowing only Vietnamese and Russian! In short, he had to pursue a difficult curriculum while teaching himself French and working in the outdoor markets to supplement his scholarship. Obtaining an surgical eye residency was similarly daunting from a financial and language point of view; there simply weren't any ophthalmic residencies in Cambodia. Dr. Ton did obtain a 3-year scholarship and $130 a month living stipend from Seva, the non-financial sponsor of my work in Cambodia. As part of full disclosure, I have been recently appointed to Seva Foundation’s Advisory Circle. The second language irony was that the training in Nepal was to be conducted in English, a language he had never studied. It was illegal to study English until 1996. So armed with a crash course in English, he headed off to Nepal for three years. He left his wife behind with her parents. He was able to visit her once a year as provided in his scholarship. He remains grateful to Seva for enabling the training; without the scholarship he could not have become an ophthalmologist. His story is not uncommon here in a land where education is highly valued, perhaps even more so due to the disruption and targeted "dumbing down" of the population by the Khmer Rouge's killing regime. Despite years of French colonial rule, the language of the young people is English. Dr. Ton says his generation was "passed by" when it came to being able to learn and to speak a second language. He gained his fluency only by dint of a ferocious drive to become a much needed eye surgeon. He now lives with his wife and three daughters in Battambang, the second largest city in Cambodia. He is the only Cambodian ophthalmologist in his entire province. He says there are less than ten in the whole country, most being in Phnom Penh. It is a pleasure to work with him and listen to his stories about training and the types of injuries and ophthalmic problems he faces every day. His daily routine is to see a few dozen patients every morning, break for lunch and then perform 15-20 operations every afternoon. In the first part of a week I spent with him, I saw more penetrating ocular injuries than I would see in a year in California. I applaud his perseverance and impact on his native Cambodia.