My most acute observation living in Cambodia for almost three years was that health care costs keep the impoverished in a crippled state, and the wealthy class in power. It is common for families to sell all of their assets, remove children from school into the workforce prematurely, and take better paying work in remote locations away from home, in attempts to resolve often-mystery illnesses occurring to an individual within the family.

There are many examples who I met personally and I was frequently horrified, from dealing with human trafficking victims to individuals with terminal disease lying on dirt floors whilst their only “carer” was forced to leave the home to search for a daily income in order to afford pain medication, OR food (whichever seemed most important on any given day). A significant proportion of the population are enslaved by a lifetime of unpayable debt. This was when I learned that powerful people claiming to hold humanitarian values, in fact do not value human life and do not care about human suffering.