How doctor’s free surgery brings joy to disfigured children in Cambodia
Jock Struthers is sitting in a small hospital on the outskirts of Phnom Penh recalling the first time he saw a woman with a brain protrusion that almost obliterated her face.
“It was here, in Cambodia, in Banteay Meanchey province, near the Thai border. I saw her driving a motorbike, then she went into a little shop. It looked like a tumour. You see so many horrendous things … but this was a young girl.”
Struthers, who’s from New Zealand, was then working with NZAID – the country’s Agency for International Development – talking to pig farmers. He did nothing “and it always worried me”.