Yoeuth was just five years old when the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia in 1975. In the turmoil that followed, she was soon separated from her family and alone. She joined others fleeing through the woods.
“We ran away from the shells and couldn’t sleep at night,” she says. “The situation we faced during the escape was difficult. Sometimes we didn’t have anything to eat, and because I was small, I couldn’t run as fast as the others. I fell behind.”
She eventually reached the refugee camps which were set up just across the border in Thailand. Soon after that, in 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and hundreds of thousands of other Cambodians arrived at the camps. There were people from all walks of life, and many of the refugees brought much-needed professional skills to the camps.
In 1987, when Yoeuth was 17, she first encountered MSF and asked a man who worked at a paediatric hospital in Khao Dang camp if he needed any staff. “Are you kidding or are you serious?” the man replied. Yoeuth was serious.
She studied everything she could on anatomy, basic healthcare and midwifery at the hospital, which MSF had set up in the camp, and worked there alongside foreign health workers.
“They motivated us and shared their knowledge,” she says. “It was exhausting work. There were many pregnant women and young mothers. I remember I was tired but very happy at the same time as I got a lot of encouragement from my colleagues.”