Radiographers- donate equipment to help children in Cambodia

Sam Tuck is a volunteer Radiography tutor based at the Children’s Surgical Centre in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The Centre is an NGO that provides free rehabilitation surgery to patients and trains local surgeons and health workers. Staff at the CSC and the 20 other centres Sam has visited are working with analogue equipment not seen in most Australian imaging environments for some time. Scant funding mean supplies for the equipment are hard to come by and Sam is asking if anyone can donate supplies including film/screen cassettes in good condition, grids and aluminum filters.

Hi everyone,

It’s been great to see the VHPA getting busy and getting results from afar.

My name is Sam Tuck, an Australian Radiographer currently working as a volunteer tutor in Cambodia. I’m based at the Children’s Surgical Center – a great NGO hospital who performs reconstructive orthopedic, ENT and ophthalmic surgery, free of charge for Cambodians (www.csc.org). I’ve visited over 20 other centers in six months to help with Radiography tuition, and the range of skills, enthusiasm and equipment ranges from fantastic to completely non-functioning.  An example of the current situation of funding, one state referral hospital that opened in February last year had manual tank developing as the only film processing available. Wet film reporting is an actual term here!

The most common tangible problem (hopefully solvable), is the lack of sets of consistent speed cassettes. Some hand cut each piece of film and place inside larger cassettes once each patient enters the room because there are no small cassettes. Others juggle plain film exposures between a mixture of fast, low contrast, fine and mammo films, which makes life even more difficult.

 Acquiring equipment is extremely difficult, especially in the public health system. Purchasing basic consumables like gloves and developer is a real day-to-day challenge. So I’m asking if anyone has film/screen cassettes in good condition, please consider donating them, as I can assure you they will be put to great use. Any other film/screen equipment would be great also, especially grids of any sort, aluminum filters etc.

I can compile the sets over here, so any cassette type will be considered. I’ll be in Cambodia until the end of July 2014, and will arrange the cassettes etc. to come over with various friends, hospital staff etc. as it is by far the most efficient and safest way to have it arrive.

Please contact me at sam@csc.org if you, or any other contact you know can help. Thanks so much!!