Beat Richner
Encyclopedia
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
pediatrician, cellist (Beatocello), and founder of children's hospitals in Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
.
Richner worked at the Kantha Bopha Children's Hospital in Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is the capital and largest city of Cambodia. Located on the banks of the Mekong River, Phnom Penh has been the national capital since the French colonized Cambodia, and has grown to become the nation's center of economic and industrial activities, as well as the center of security,...
in 1974 and 1975. When the Khmer Rouge overran Cambodia, he was forced to return to Switzerland.
In 1991, Richner returned to Cambodia and saw the devastation that had taken place during his absence. He was asked to re-open the children's hospital by the King.
He has opened four children's hospitals in Cambodia, Kantha Bopha I and II in Phnom Penh and Jayavarman VII in Siem Reap
Siem Reap
Siem Reap is the capital city of Siem Reap Province in northwestern Cambodia, and is the gateway to Angkor region.Siem Reap has colonial and Chinese-style architecture in the Old French Quarter, and around the Old Market...
. Kantha Bopha IV was opened in Phnom Penh in December 2005. A 5th hospital is currently being constructed (also in Phnom Penh).
Beatocello performs free concerts at the Jayavarman VII hospital in Siem Reap on Friday and Saturday nights. The evenings include songs, played on his cello, and talks on the health crisis in Cambodia. He asks the young tourists for blood, the older tourists for money, and the ones in between for both.
Richner and his work in Cambodia have been the subject of five documentary films by Georges Gachot: Bach at the Pagoda (1997), And the Beat Goes On (1999), Depardieu goes for Beatocello (2002), and Money or Blood (2004).
In 2006, the documentary "Dr Beat and The Passive Genocide of Children" by Australian film maker Janine Hosking was produced with the trailer viewable at http://www.drbeat.com.au.
The Kantha Bopha hospitals treat half a million children per year free of charge. Approx 100,000 seriously ill children are admitted. Japanese encephalitis, malaria, dengue fever and typhoid are common, often exacerbated by the presence of TB. TB is the number one killer. Mortality rate is an astonishingly low 1%.
Kantha Bopha has 1900 staff of which only Richner and the head pathologist Dr Denis Laurent are foreigners. Hundreds of medical students have graduated from the Jayavarman VII in Siem Reap.
Dr Richner claims that over 80% of all paediatric health care in Cambodia is provided by his hospitals.
The hospitals are primarily funded by donations from individuals in Switzerland, where Richner is somewhat of an icon. Operational expense in 2006 was in the order of $17mill USD.
Richner has waged war on the large AID agencies claiming that their policies of poor health care for poor people in poor countries is not only immoral but illogical.
Richner was named "Swiss of the Year" in 2003.
Works
- Kantha Bopha. Als Schweizer Arzt in Kambodscha ("Kantha Bopha: A children's doctor in Cambodia"), 1995, ISBN 3-85823-570-9 (How the re-opening of Kantha Bopha was made possible and why it is successful)
- Hoffnung für die Kinder von Kantha Bopha, NZZ 2004, ISBN 3-03823-047-2
- Hope for the children of Kantha Bopha: our third hospital, maternity ward, training and conference centre, translated from German, NZZ 2004, ISBN 3-03823-098-7