Blood shortage hits Cambodia

Blood shortage hits Cambodia

PHNOM PENH (Reuter): Cambodian medical teams face a shortage of blood for soldiers wounded while fighting Khmer Rouge guerrillas, media reports and officials said yesterday.

An Information Ministry spokesman, citing latest casualty figures, told a news briefing 28 government soldiers had been killed and 94 wounded in the northwest between Feb. 12 and 18.

"During the same period, six civilians were killed and three others wounded and 26 were captured by the Khmer Rouge," spokesman Sieng Lapresse said.

The Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper quoted an officer at the military hospital in the northwest Cambodian provincial capital of Battambang as saying he was worried about the blood shortage.

The officer, Gen. Ly Vanark, said supplies of medicine were insufficient and some of the wounded were operated on without anesthetic in a hospital overcrowded with almost 400 soldiers.

The Health Ministry Undersecretary of State, Dy Narongrith, confirmed there were blood shortages due to a lack of donors.

"Our people don't understand the importance of donating blood because they are afraid of losing energy."

Government troops have suffered significant casualties, mostly from land mines, in efforts to dislodge the Khmer Rouge from positions in the northwest since the beginning of the year.

The Khmer Rouge, who ruled by terror between 1975 and 1979, have waged a low-level insurgency against the coalition government since turning their backs on a 1991 peace pact and rejecting the results of UN-run elections in 1993.