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9 Refugee Reports 1 (1988)

handle is hein.immigration/refgrpt0009 and id is 1 raw text is: A Project of the American Council for Nationalities Service 815 Fifteenth Street NW, Suite 610 Washington, DC 20005 (202) 667-0782 Folume IX, Number 1 January 22, 1988 iURDLES BAR PATH TO CONTINUING MEDICAL PRACTICE FOR IE UGEE PHYSICIANS qhen the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh in 1975, 3okhom Chan, M.D., was working in that city's largest nospital. He recalls that the Khmer Rouge forced the sick and injured, as well as the hospital staff, out of the hospital and onto the forced march into the :ountryside. One of Chan's best friends, a surgeon, worked until the last moment trying to make wounded people as am- bulatory as possible. As soon as the hospital was zleared out, Chan recalls, his friend was killed. For the next several years Chan hid his identity. He discarded his diploma and any other documents link- ing himself to his past life. If I had been caught with my diploma, I would have been executed. I I looked like a walking skeleton, he said, car- rying a plow on my shoulder from 3 AM to 9 PM every day. I lost my parents, two of my children, and eight other family members, he said. After the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, Chan returned to working as a physician, but came to see that he was under constant surveillance. One day he was told that a Heng Samrin soldier wanted him; he left for the Thai border that very night. After the journey to Thailand, he worked in the hospital in the Khao I Dang refugee camp. Today, seven years after arriving in the United States, Sokhom Chan is working as a social worker with Cambodian refugees in New York. Although he passed the ECFMG exam in 1982--the exam required for foreign ined- ical graduates (FMGs) seeking to enter U.S. residency and fellowship programs--Chan has not been able to re- sume work in the area of his training. He has been un- able to find a hospital residency program willing to take him. They wanted American medical school gradu- ates as residents or physicians from English-speaking countries like India, he said. Mohammad K. Waziri, M.D., had been the director general of Afghanistan's National Medical Laboratories ntil the Soviet invasion in 1979. After the invasion, I was replaced by a communist, he said. Under pressures to revive a faltering health IN THIS ISSUE: Refugee health professionals face a host of daunting obstacles to continuing their professional calling in the United States. Focusing pri- marily on the difficulties faced by refugee physicians, this issue explores their problems and the alternatives available for them .......... 1 Update ................. 7 * Recent Developments Congress passes a variety of refugee-related legislation, including refugee program budgets, adjustment of status for Poles, Afghans, Ugandans, and Ethiopians with EVD, and special provisions for Indo- chinese, Cubans, and Amer- asians ..................... 10 * Projects and Programs Projects serve the needs of refugee physicians ......... 13 Meetings and Conferences Reader Exchange ...... 15 Resources ............. 15 • Statistics FY 87 Refugee Arrivals by State ...................... 16 Digitized from Best Copy Available

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