Health and hearts

In Siem Reap we had the chance to have dinner with Bill Housworth and Eugene Targus. They are doctors at the Angkor Hospital for Children, which has worked with Davik Teng, the young girl with the hole in her heart who we have been following.

Housworth is the new director of the hospital, although he has been a part-time volunteer over the years.

Over dinner, we had an interesting discussion about some of the challenges of providing health care. Angkor Hospital for Children is run by a non-governmental or charitable organization that relies on donor support for most of its work.

Housworth says the hospital sees about 110,000 patients and its 50 beds are almost always at capacity. Much of the work done is educational and preventative and the hospital has a limited budget for technology.

I asked Housworth if a heart-lung machine, the kind needed to provide open heart surgery, was on his wish list. He said, "sure" but it was unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Housworth then described some of the issues the hospital has to deal with.

"There's an ethical question of how we allocate resources," Housworth said, noting that it is much more cost efficient to fight diarrhea and malnutrition.

"That will affect the most lives," Housworth said. "But the other side is the donors" who the doctor noted would rather see their money spent on curing HIV and fixing hearts, because they are sexier.