At just past midnight on Friday, a young mother took the decision to leave her young child on a street corner and walk away. The child has a cleft lip, unacceptable in the town where she lived, a shame on her family, a punishment.

An hour later a stranger, alerted by an unnatural scream, wandered into the street to investigate, to find a two month old baby in poor health. What happened next is still unclear, what we do know is a baby arrived at Angkor Children’s Hospital at 6am. That in itself is extraordinary, the child was found near the Thai border in Preah Vihear province, so to get to Siem Reap must have been a journey on unmade roads of some four hours, in pure darkness. Sadly we have no contact details, but that must have been a journey from hell.

Baby Araget was refused admission, but local people guided the strangers to our gates in a final appeal for help. Sadly, being full to capacity we cannot take any more children, nor do we have any nursery facilities. However this being Cambodia, and being free of utterly pointless legislation, the lady on the spot took the child into the care of Cambodia Orphan Fund and Araget has become our 36th child.

I arrived on site at 09.30am, having oddly enough spent the part of the previous day at the very same Angkor Children’s Hospital, in the presence of an extraordinary gentleman I had met some weeks earlier. Gene is a retired surgeon who, instead of heading for the golf club on retirement, uprooted to work unpaid in the third world, where he has been for the last eight years. A quick call was made to check the correct course of action and within half an hour I arrived with Araget and some of our support team.

We took our place politely at the back of a huge queue, some of whom remembered Argget from the 6am arrival. Astonishingly the parents surrounded us and guided us to the front of the queue, and within 70 minutes we had completed an initial health check and prognosis.

Araget is very weak from lack of nourishment, but with proper feeding through an adapted teat on her bottle should start to recover and put on weight. We will worry about HIV and blood tests later. The first operation on her deformity will take place at one year of age, and she should be fully treated by 24 months. We are now seeking to find ‘Mum’ and assure her Araget can be cured and is on the road to recovery. If we are unable to, we will continue to look after her until a decision is made on her future.

The children at Osborne House are delighted with their new sister. This wonderful group of children is a big family in every sense of the word, and club together strongly to look after the weaker members. However one young gentleman assured our lovely three year old Sophon that as she was no longer the baby of the family she would have to leave. A heartbroken Sophon was retrieved on her way to the gates in floods of tears. She has been very much reassured otherwise with lots of hugs and TLC. Someone will be doing some extra work cleaning out the toilets today, and Sophon might just get an ice lolly.