The Northern Light

Issue date: 7/29/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: Kaitlin Johnson [Click to enlarge]

Walking among the crowd that gathers daily outside the office at Children Surgical Centre there are some graphic sights. Children sitting in their mothers' arms display their empty eye sockets. Young men's burns bubble over with rancid pus. There are women wearing scarves to cover their melted faces; the acid victims.

Doctor James J. Gollogly strides through the crowd with impatient energy. He hollers at a Khmer nurse who hovers in his wake.

"Have you prepared the samples yet? They have to be sent to Belgium! This is very important now," he says with a smile fixed on his face. The more frustrated he gets, the wider his smile grows.

Gollogly - or Dr. Jim as everyone calls him - is founder, CEO and head surgeon of CSC, located outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Each day he and his team of local surgeons provide free treatment to impoverished Cambodians. Each year they save hundreds of lives and improve the lives of thousands.

CSC is an Alaskan non-governmental organization. Gollogly is an Alaskan doctor. He spent 20 years in Fairbanks, Alaska, teaching part time at UAF.

Gollogly decided to take a six month sabbatical to do volunteer work with the Red Cross in 1992 and was asked to come to Cambodia. Initially he rejected the request.

Cambodia was ravaged after years of political instability following first the American-Vietnam War and then the Khmer Rouge's genocidal communist regime in the late 70's. After the Khmer Rouge was ousted, they continued to terrorize the country in guerilla style warfare for the next decade. The country had only semi-stabilized recently, at the beginning of the 90's.

"I said; 'look guys, I'm British. I had nothing to do with your war. I don't have anything to do with cleaning up your mess.' When I said volunteer, I meant Africa," Gollogly said.

He reconsidered and went to Cambodia, although his first day there made him wish he hadn't.

While he was sitting bored in a meeting, people outside began to shout. Three land mine victims had arrived in the back of a trailer. One had lost part of an arm, the other had a head wound and a third looked fine but was obviously in shock. Gollogly was asked to operate immediately on the boy who had lost his arm. He amputated below the elbow and stabilized the boy.

Continued...

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