Story shared by Mrs. Chin Srey, Village Malaria Worker, Cambodia

My name is Chin Srey. I am 42 years old farmer, living in Anlong village, Por Chrey commune, Pich Chenda District with three daughters. As my personal experience with malaria, I got infected during my pregnancy. It was very difficult to get treatment for malaria. My daughter got sick very often since little. That’s why I become a village malaria worker for years now, and I want no more malaria in my village, especially the vivax parasite. I have to spend my time as volunteer work for average 2 hours a day. Sometimes, I got complained from the villagers when my malaria commodities stock out. And the incentive I am getting is very low. But I proud of my volunteer work. I get a lot of new knowledge about malaria. People in my village can now get easy access to malaria diagnosis and treatment. I see malaria cases are decreasing. And the most important factor is that I get respect from my villagers.

My village is very far from the health center, and there is also no health post in my village. One of my main challenges as a volunteer is that it is very difficult to travel during the rainy season for health center meeting. I need to stay over two nights just for the meeting and collect medicine. As a suggestion, I want to get enough malaria drugs for the whole month. And I also want to request to have one Mobile malaria worker who can provide malaria tests and treat people in the forest because, as a lady, I am difficult to go to the forest for safety issues. Having MMW will help to reach out to forest goers. I also want to suggest to give us more incentive and probably a motorbike to come to the Health Center because our motorbike got broken along the way of going to the health center.