At Friends Without A Border, we promote sustainable solutions to health care in developing countries through the model of Treatment + Education + Prevention by:
Providing high-quality medical care to children in a compassionate environment;
Educating families and health care professionals throughout Southeast Asia;
Improving the health, nutrition and hygiene of local communities through outreach programs and home care.
Our Story:
World-renowned Japanese photographer Kenro Izu first visited Cambodia in 1993 to photograph the Angkor Wat temples. During his travels, he often encountered ill and malnourished children, many missing arms and legs — a horrific legacy of America’s conflict in Vietnam. After witnessing a young girl die, simply because her father could not afford $2 for medical care, Kenro decided to take action and give back to the country that inspired his photographic journey.
In 1996, he founded Friends Without A Border, a nonprofit organization with the mission to provide compassionate medical care to children in Southeast Asia. After years of planning and gathering support from donors, photographers and friends around the world, Friends Without A Border opened Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC) in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Since that time, AHC has treated nearly 2 million children, trained thousands of health-care professionals and was deemed “one of only three essential health-care institutions” in the entire country by a Cambodian health minister.
In January of 2013, Friends Without A Border celebrated a long-held goal as Kenro handed over a heart-shaped “key to the hospital” to the dedicated staff of AHC, thus transferring the administration of the hospital to local management. At the same time, Friends decided to expand its mission of helping the children of Southeast Asia into another country: Laos.
On February 11, 2015, Friends opened the doors to a new pediatric hospital: Lao Friends Hospital for Children (LFHC), in Luang Prabang. On opening day, the staff of LFHC treated 47 children in its Outpatient Department. In its first year of operation, LFHC treated nearly 20,000 children. In 2016, the hospital opened a Neonatal Unit, as well as a Surgical Theater, which greatly expanded the reach of services available to children in Laos. Today, the hospital staff sees more than 100 children each day. Visit LFHC to learn more.