Abstract
Background and Objectives: Medical volunteering seeks to meet the clinical needs of underserved areas, but has been criticized for difficulties in addressing local health issues and resultant lack of sustainability. Our team has visited rural Cambodia annually since 2012. This study reports the illnesses encountered during the recent mission and share our experiences to improve the efficiency of medical volunteering. Materials and Methods: Infrastructure, such as public electricity or water, was unavailable, hence most medical care and records were hand-performed. We categorized (1) primary diagnoses (chief complaints) by duration of symptoms, and (2) primary and secondary diagnoses (illnesses that were not related to the chief complaint) by severity of illness since patients commonly reported multiple symptoms. Blood pressure and anthropometric values were also checked and analyzed. Results: We encountered 317 adult and 141 pediatric patients. Among adults, 61.3% had persistent chronic (>6 month) symptoms of their chief complaints. The commonest diagnoses of chronic symptoms were musculoarthritis (31.5%) and gastroesophageal reflux disease and/or gastritis (21.7%). Hypertension and/or cardiac problems were relatively common among males (13.6%). The most common diagnosis among the severest cases (specialized or intensive care recommended) was cardiac problems (14.8%), often with abnormalities in sonography or electrocardiogram. For children, the overwhelming majority of diagnoses were related to acute symptoms and low severity, and approximately half were cases of the common cold. Commonly prescribed drugs were antacids or mucosal protectors (31.3%), Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) or other painkillers (27.6%), and antiparasites (17.7%) in adults, and NSAIDs (44.7%) and antiparasites (23.2%) in children. Among adults, 32.7% were diagnosed with hypertension, and body mass index (p = 0.003) and age (p < 0.001) were both correlated with hypertension and its grade. Conclusions: Our study offers practical help to volunteer health workers planning to visit Southeast Asia.
Highlights
Medical volunteering is an active means of aiding local communities in developing countries to fulfill unmet medical needs
Our study revealed the distribution of illnesses in the setting of medical volunteering in rural Cambodia and comprehensively showed clinical needs by analyzing the illness distribution by the case severity and duration of symptoms
The present study found that musculoarthritis and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and/or gastritis were the most common diagnoses, which corresponds with the findings of our previous report [6]
Summary
Medical volunteering is an active means of aiding local communities in developing countries to fulfill unmet medical needs. This practice has been increasing, and over 6000 medical mission trips are conducted by US medical practitioners annually [1]. Short medical volunteering is mostly criticized for being too self-serving, meaning that the values and interests of the participating medical practitioners are put before the local community’s medical needs. Medical volunteering seeks to meet the clinical needs of underserved areas, but has been criticized for difficulties in addressing local health issues and resultant lack of sustainability.
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