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For richner or poorer
Casey Whale meets the doctor who performs to raise awareness for cambodian kids in need
It’s Saturday night in a half-empty lecture theatre that’s chilly with air-conditioning. A rotund, late-middle-aged Swiss man sporting a shock of thinning curly hair walks on stage and picks up a cello, just as he has done on 507 prior Saturday nights over the last 20 years.
At the end of each song he regales the audience with tales from his ‘day job’ as the director of four Kantha Bopha children’s hospitals in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, and asks them to donate “blood if you’re young, money if you’re old or both if you’re in between.”
Beat Richner’s concerts are about raising money and awareness as much as they’re about music.
He effortlessly and almost compulsively reels off the statistics: Eight million children saved; 700 children currently hospitalised at this facility; 2,100 local staff ; 160 cases of dengue fever; 60 operations per day; 50 babies born daily; and 260 to 320 daily admissions.
His frustration at the corruption and political situation inherent in Cambodia and the “system of absurdity” that is practised by international health organisations fast becomes evident. His message is clear when describing the WHO and UNICEF and he pulls no punches.
They are perpetrating a “passive genocide of Cambodian children,” he says, “by practising poor medicine for poor countries.” Providing cheap, generic drugs without investing in infrastructure doesn’t cut it as far as Richner is concerned.
When we meet the following day for a tour of the bright and airy Jayavarman VII Children’s Hospital, the normally spry 62-year-old shakes his head sadly when I say how much I enjoyed the concert.
“Now in Cambodia there are so many less tourists than last year because of the financial crisis and swine flu,” he says. “I have never seen so few people at my concerts as there are now.”
As we tour the wards and pass hundreds of children, his involvement in every aspect of the hospital is apparent. Richner greets all the staff with familiarity and introduces his head surgeon by proudly stating that Swiss doctors who have seen him work rate the Cambodian as at least as good as the best Europe has to off er.
Richner first came to Cambodia in 1974 as a young Red Cross doctor. Back then he was working at the Kantha Bopha hospital in Phnom Penh, and was the last to leave the grounds as the Khmer Rouge took the capital.
His sadness at having to leave the country to its awful fate is apparent as he recounts the story. Thoughts of the 953 doctors who were in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge came to power in particular haunt his conscience. Only 53 survived the reign of terror.
After returning to Switzerland and paediatrics, a chance 1991 meeting with Cambodia’s King Sihanouk in Paris changed the course of Richner’s life once again.
Sihanouk asked him to return to Cambodia and rebuild Kantha Bopha, which had been destroyed by the war. Although he had his doubts about their chances of success – given the country’s unstable political and economic situation – he decided to sign on to rebuild and run the hospital for two years. That was 18 years ago.
The model is one that Richner hopes can be adopted by others in the developing world. At Kantha Bopha hospitals, everyone from the head surgeon to the cleaning staff is paid an above-average wage to dissuade under-the-table payments. In a country where the average monthly wage is less than US$100, the cleaners at Kantha Bopha make US$200.
Money is also invested in state-of-the-art equipment and medicines equal to any children’s hospitals in Europe. No child is turned away and none have to pay for their treatment – most would never be able to aff ord it. According to Richner, 80% of the children that are admitted wouldn’t survive without the treatment that’s only offered to them here.
When asked whether he thinks of heading home, Richner says that he would very much like to, but that his obligations to the hospital make it impossible. “I am often homesick but it’s okay,” he says, “because my parents are no longer living, and my sisters and my brother support me in doing this.”
Despite their medical successes, Kantha Bopha’s financial position still isn’t secure and the constant grind of fundraising (90% of the hospitals’ US$25 million annual operational costs come from private donors) has made Richner weary.
“As long as I’m here the money will come more or less,” he says; “as soon as I have the sustainable financing then I can retire.”
It’s hard to see Richner enjoying the quiet life on a golf course in Switzerland. But then again, it’s hard to imagine one man holding together a network of children’s hospitals in a developing country through sheer determination and the help of a cello. It just goes to show that anything’s possible.
CLOWNING FOR A CAUSE
“BEATOCELLO” has been well known in his native Switzerland for many years. After returning from Cambodia in the mid-‘70s, Richner invented the alter ego to perform as a clown, playing comedic songs accompanied by his cello.
NOWADAYS his entertaining is limited to solo Bach pieces for tourists in Siem Reap and several gala concerts a year in Switzerland to boost funds.
RICHNER gives free cello concerts at Jayavarman VII Children’s Hospital every Saturday at 7.15pm. To donate to the Kantha Bopha foundation, visit www.beat-richner.chw
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