Charlie Gardner
UK-Cambodia - GP
Dr. Gardner volunteered with Improving Global Health (IGH) to support project work in rural Cambodia. Partnered with the Maddox-Jolie-Pitt Foundation (MJP), IGH deploys long-term volunteers to work with Cambodian health workers to better healthcare and improve training.
“I’m a newly qualified GP working as a locum around Dorset and Hampshire at the moment. I also work in Accidents & Emergency in a couple of sites as well. It’s a great job. I wanted to push myself and learn skills outside the clinical roles where I would be able to bring back and apply to my job in the UK.
The project I work on is looking at household air pollution and the healthcare burdens that are rising from cooking solid fuels indoors. In Samlot, 99% of the cooks here are women. It empowers women to do something to change their own healthcare and that of their children. It has a very direct link to the environment, and it’s the cutting down of trees and the provision of solid fuels that’s driving this healthcare problem and we need to attack both at the same time.
Working within the healthcare department of MJP would be impossible without the help of our Cambodian colleagues within the healthcare team. I see extraordinary leadership skills amongst these people and I think that they are the real drivers in this community in getting these projects set up. They command an enormous respect from the local population here…. And I think that without them, nothing would ever be achieved here.”
