In 1975, the Communist Khmer Rouge forces, led by Pol Pot, took over a Cambodian government that was plagued by corruption and incompetence. While Pol Pot envisioned creating a classless, agrarian society, he used labor camps, prisons, and killing fields to do so. From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge brought chaos to this small South Asian country, killing nearly 2 - 3 million people through torture, execution and starvation..

Murdering doctors, nurses, teachers and other educated people first, the Khmer Rouge forcibly moved the remaining population to rural areas and forced everyone to work in the fields. But under brutal conditions, people starved, died of disease or were tortured as the Khmer Rouge got the best of the harvest. In 1979 hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, starving and ill, fled for relative safety along the Thailand border.

By 1979, Vietnamese troops had been waging a three-year war against the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and were close to eradicating them. But the legacy of Pol Pot and the ensuing war had displaced hundreds of thousands of people, many of them malnourished or near starvation and all of them heading to refugee camps set up near the Cambodia-Thailand border or farther inside Thailand.

Doctors and nurses volunteering with the American Refugee Committee and World Relief helped to staff the camps and treat the sick and malnourished refugees. Medical staff were particularly concerned over the long term effects of malnutrition on the children. The smallest children looked like old people, their skin drawn tightly over their ribs. Every Cambodian child born between 1975 and 1979 could be at risk for long term health problems.