Katie Kirschke

"If you're in the middle of a field and you're suffering a cardiac arrest, you're going to need to call someone," says Vuthy Roeun of White Center.

In Cambodia, however, there is no one to call, but this is soon to change.

In 2002, Roeun, a Cambodia native, with the help of relative Sos Y. Ouch, founded the Outreach Emergency Services Program to help create fire fighters and pre-hospital care in Cambodia. The outreach program has about 15 volunteers, a mix of fire fighters, paramedics, Emergency Medical Technicians and a nurse, Christina, who is Roeun's wife. Most of the volunteers come from Mountain View Fire and Rescue, Gig Harbor Fire, Milton Fire, Central Pierce Fire and Rescue and American Medical Response, which is the local ambulance company Roeun works for.

Roeun says he has never heard of another program like Outreach Emergency Services Program. Individuals may take on a similar task, but Roeun says he doesn't know of anyone who focuses on training like Outreach Emergency Services Program does. "If I'm going to bring you equipment," Roeun says, "I'm going to teach you how to use it and maintain it."

Other countries are helping, Roeun says, but Outreach Emergency Services Program is the only one that is making a large impact and continuing to go back. Outreach Emergency Services Program has traveled to Cambodia six times thus far, taking donated equipment and training on each of its two-week-long excursions.

Roeun and his team first traveled to Cambodia in 2002 to evaluate the country's emergency-response situation, which they discovered was nonexistent.

"It's pretty hard to believe that any country doesn't have that, Roeun says of the country's lack of emergency medical technicians. Cambodia is sprinkled with little clinics, Christina Roeun says, but these are a "complete potluck," meaning some clinics offer good treatment, while others do not.

One of the problems with Cambodia, she says, is that where they are right now is equivalent to where they were 30 years ago. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge regime successfully captured the capital city, Phnom Penh, and set up a new government. The Khmer Rouge was responsible for killing an estimated 1.7 million people and as a result Cambodia's professional and technical class was virtually exterminated. Christina Roeun says this incident set Cambodia back and explains why they need the help now.

These brutal killings are also one of the reasons why Outreach Emergency Services Program is so important to Roeun. He was living in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge's reign and managed to escape in 1979. To Roeun's surprise, on his second trip to Cambodia with Outreach Emergency Services Program, he discovered he still has family living there.

In 2005, Outreach Emergency Services Program made its third trek to Cambodia. They donated an ambulance and a 1979 ladder truck, which was the first truck of its kind anywhere in the country. They also donated air packs, protective clothing and fire hoses. Before these donations, Cambodia had no way to fight fires.

Outreach Emergency Services Program receives most of its equipment by donation because U.S. regulations require companies to switch out there equipment after certain periods of time, Christina Roeun says. Therefore they can donate their old gear, which isn't really old at all. But while the equipment is all donated, the group's travel funds are not.

"It's out of pocket," Roeun says, but sometimes the family of a volunteer will donate to their trip fund.

Financial burdens aren't the only problem Outreach Emergency Services Program encounters. The language barrier can make teaching very difficult, Roeun says, because some of the words just don't translate, specifically the medical terminology that Roeun and his crew use while teaching.

"For example, they would call the femur 'the big bone in your leg' or 'the thigh bone,'" said Roeun, who speaks Cambodian.

"[Cambodian] is really descriptive like that," his wife added.

Outreach Emergency Services Program's most recent trip to Cambodia, in mid-January, was yet another monumental one. The Outreach Emergency Services Program volunteers set up an emergency medical technician entity for the first time. Roeun says Cambodia has many different police groups that each have different responsibilities. Now they have an Emergency Medical Services police force whose sole purpose is caring for patients and saving lives. During this trip, Outreach Emergency Services Program also conducted more training sessions on topics such as mass casualty, bio-terrorism awareness and cardiac resuscitation. They also took over three automated external defibrillators, which were donated by ZOLL, a company that creates resuscitation products. These were the first-ever automated external defibrillators to go to Cambodia and it was a large donation as each cost around $3,000.

Now that a Cambodian EMT team is in place, Outreach Emergency Services Program is working to set up a 911 system. Jerry Newcomer, Outreach Emergency Services Program's communication specialist, has traveled to Cambodia the last two years evaluating the country in preparation for the project.

Expansion is also on Outreach Emergency Services Program's agenda. While it started as a project solely dedicated to Cambodia, Outreach Emergency Services Program is now receiving requests for help from other countries, including parts of South America.

"(Outreach Emergency Services Program) is going to expand on its own because people are hearing about it," Rouen says. He and Christina say they are happy with the results of Outreach Emergency Services Program, even though she admits she didn't believe the project was ever possible.

"I was his biggest critic when he first came up with the idea," Christina Rouen says. "But, he's convinced me."

For more information on Outreach Emergency Services Program, visit the web site www.oesp.net.

Katie Kirschke is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.