children suffering from dengue fever, every week. this is a part of world where bird flu and sars originated. >> a new picture for us. i've never seen this in cambodia before. >> he is the head of the hospital and he allowed us into the icu where the patients are treated. >> to give you an idea how busy this is, even while we were talking. >> he said 66 children came to this hospital with the mystery illness. for 64 of them, it was 24 hours of hell before they died. you heard right. all but two died. in many of these children it started off rather mild. a mild fever. then things progress quickly from there. for example, in this child's case who is 2 years old, we

don't know what is causing his encephalitis but this is typically what happens. it starts to bulk and the eyes as you can see, as well. from there it become mercy less. it goes from the head to the lungs. >> you see the lungs. five hours later. >> the last few hours of life, this unknown illness completely destroyed the child's lungs. and there was no way to stop it. >> never seen anything like this before. >> no. this is the first time at the end of april. and this makes us worried. >> something calledentero virus 71, typically associated with hand, foot-and-mouth disease was found in more than a dozen patients. that's only adding to the mystery. >> with the entero virus -- >> never, never. >> it has to be something else. >> i think so. but we cannot prove. but we must look for.

>> that's where the investigation goes next. cambodian health officials and the w.h.o. say they're looking into whether expired medication, the wrong medication, or inappropriate medication such as steroids could be to blame. >> steroids can also make a relatively harmless infection suddenly much more severe. >> yes. that is definitely a possibility. >> it was also heart breaking but also this puzzle that doctors and disease detectives had to solve. the first question right off the bat, is this contagious? if so, how fast does it spread? the answer to that was encouraging. it wasn't showing up in big clusters. meaning it wasn't spreading fast from person to person. instead, the cases seem to have come one by one from all around the country. i also learned most of the sick children came from smaller villages. so i headed out to see for myself. this is what a place looks like that ranks in the bottom 10% of

childhood mortality anywhere in the world of it is rainy season in cam bode i can't. it lasts from may to october and you can see what one of the worst problems is in terms of controlling disease. many of the people who had mysterious illness were told come from villages that look like this. there are no tvs, no newspapers. the only way people are learning about it is from school children who hear about it in school. i was talking to 14-year-old and his 4-year-old sister earlier. they were told by their teacher that there is this mysterious illness. if they get it, people die and they die quickly. they're healthy but this is obviously of great concern. just looking around here. you can see how challenging conditions. are for example, there is no indoor plumbing. so if you simply want to collect water, you often time have to do it right outside your tiny little home. they get these big buckets. one of the first things they're told is no standing water anywhere near their home. you imagine. you look at a situation like this where they have vats of water. and they collect it.

it is the only way they can get any. this is where mosquitos live as well. mosquitos that transmit disease. there have been 10,000 cases this year alone. mosquito that's bite during the day are more likely to cause dengue and the ones at night cause malaria. so many people getting sick here. in the thousands. if they do, what happens next? often time they have to rally their neighbors, gather a little money and maybe hire someone like this to get them to a hospital as quickly as possible. >> by the second day of our visit, there was a lot of attention on one particular virus. ed-71. now that virus is not new and it has been deadly before. more than 160 people died from it in china last year. 18 people in vietnam just this spring. mostly children. in those krirkss children hadn't died as quickly as cam bode i

can't. so ev-71 was a piece of there but it wasn't the whole story because it wasn't found in all the children who died. where did all that leave us? the only thing doctors knew for sure was when the child arrived at the hospital, they were dying. and fast. a fever. convulsions and encephalitis and then the lungs. completely destroyed. since the end of april doctors in cambodia struggled with a miss terrorism that mystery was ultimately had discovered right here. blood samples were brought to this laboratory and analyzed like you see there and eventually they concluded that there were several different pathogens. strept congress us and dengue. >> to crack this case, the lab will to work backwards. first eliminate known viruses like avian flu, sars. >> the first thing that goes through your head is to try to

determine whether this is one of the usual suspects that you haven't detected before. if it is, has it mutated or changed in a way that it causes more severe disease. or is it something completely new? >> the epidemioligist and the viral on theist, two french doctors living in cambodia solved the mystery. >> one of the things we've heard several time from the world health organization is no steroids should be used. they seem to say that steroids made this problem worse. >> when you have a dying child, you try to use what you have at hand. and they were right to try that. now, whether or not it helps remains to be determined. >> i don't want to belabor this point but they really seemed to indicate that it hurt. that these infections a lot of times, they can be a problem but they're not particularly dangerous. but something pushes them over

the top. and they thought that the steroids seemed to be a common denominator. >> from the cases that we reviewed, almost all of the children died and almost all of them had steroids. >> steroids can be a poet enanti-inflammatory. when given to children with aggressive infections, steroids can suppress the body's own immune system how long the infection to become even worse. as was the case with the virus ev-71. >> you hear about a lot of different viruses. avian flu, ev-71 as far as they could tell really had not been in cambodia before. for sure. why does it suddenly appear like this? why does it appear with such a vengeance? >> it looks like this has emerged strongly probably because it had not circulated with the same intensity in the past year. >> it is believed a slight

variation in the ev-71 made the virus stronger. and the steroids made the body's resistance even weaker. >> so case closed. it sounds like the case is closed from your standpoint. >> yes. i think we can close the case. >> so here's the bottom line. the worst case fears did not come true. this is not a highly contagious deadly virus that is about to spread around the world. but these are terrible diseases. and they're still a major threat to children in cambodia and all of southeast asia. for the time being, the w.h.o. has told health boringers to stop using steroids in patients with these infections and reminding them to prevent transmission. hand to mouth is still the most common way. after all is said and done, the basic supply, wash your hands often. whether in cambodia or anywhere else in the world. the good news is there hasn't been another confirmed case in over a week. these are tough challenges. but this is a place with people who are used to tough

challenges. coming up, a man who was handed an ak-47 at age 15. he went from being a child soldier to learning medicine. ♪ the one and only, cheerios [ male announcer ] what if you had thermal night-vision goggles,

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that in the 1970s left at least 2 million people dead. even today, they're holding trials for former leaders. at age 15, sonol ray was forced to join that terrible army as a soldier. somehow he found a way to put down his gun, become a healer and find hope. >> you are to fight or run? >> his childhood memories are filled one imaginables. did you see people getting killed? >> i see my friend, fellow soldiers being killed by than mine, blown off their legs. chest gone, hand gone, face gone. >> at age 15 he said he was taken from his family and forced to be a child soldier under the regime. >> i will one sister and i don't know where they were during that time. >> when this was happening.

you're so young. you're a child soldier at a very violent time. did you ever lose hope? >> you want to have a break. have a hope that one day i don't have to live like this. >> his initial training was with a gun but he got a break. they decided to make him a paramedic. >> i did not know anything at that time. when i looked back, i think that was when i am safe from being a killer, a real killer. to be a life saver. >> today, sano ray is saving lives at world vision's crisis trauma recovery center in cambodia. >> these children that you help now, can you see part of your own life in them? tell me about them. who are they? where do they come from? >> they were children who were

victims of sexual abuse and trafficking. >> this is what happens. they're actually abused and they're sold? >> yes. for second. i don't want these children, these boys, these girls to experience that kind of life i have. i want them to have a big dream for themselves. >> is this your life's work now? this what you will do for the rest of your life? >> this is the thing that help make joy in my heart. and that dream, the dream that these children will one day become a good mother, a good wife, a good father. those are the dreams. i have that dream. i really want they have that dream in their heart, too. >> sano is now turning his childhood nightmare into hope for others. that's part of the reason we do these human factor stories. the stories of people turning tragedy and really challenging conditions into hope. we'll have much more right after

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. we are back with sgmd. while i'm here in phnom penh, up in russia this week, russian astronaut williams is set to blast off with the international space station. believe it or not know that there will be racing along with me and the lucky cnn viewers in september. she is doing it from space. before i left for cambodia, i visited her at the johnson space center in houston to see what life is like up there and also, how she is planning on training for this race. >> what goes on in here? >> this is a place we spend a lot of our time. these are sleep stations. sleeping in space of course is just as important as earth. >> can i go inside? you literally go inside here. roomy. but then i guess, you know, it

doesn't really matter your position. >> right. you can be upside right, down, sideways, backwards, forwards. as soon as you close your eyes, you don't know. >> booster ignition and lift-off. at the space shuttle discovery, lighting up the nighttime sky. >> when i flew before, we were in the middle of the construction of the space station. it was pretty regular that people going up to the space station were going to be doing space walks. >> and a good view of suni williams helping to tie down the radiator. >> that's so wild. >> we're going to put you right on the front. you'll be facing backwards but you're like a statue on the front of a car. you're right on the front of noted two. looking back toward the space station. >> let's fly around a little bit. >> wow! what a view. >> we might have a space walk. we have lots of science. >> and the triathlon. >> and the triathlon. >> you're going to do it. you're doing it oerth.

>> absolutely. this is the gym. >> is this going to be the model for swim? >> it is a resistant exercise. swimming is resistance with water. this is the only thing we can do. >> while we're in the pacific ocean, she'll be doing this up in space. this will be her version of swimming. about 11 minutes, right? >> so if we go from noted three to the lab and we'll start out on the bike. >> in terms of hills and stuff. >> so i can get a profile of what the race looks like. yeah. now i'm feeling it. i'm feeling it. i'm doing all right. so this will be how many miles? >> 18. >> 18 miles. so we're going to have to do this on time. i don't have a distance here. you're going 17,500 miles. i'll be done like that, what i am a saying? i'll be done way before you. >> maybe an hour roughly?

i would say -- >> 18 miles an hour. that sounds good. we're back to noted three. >> okay. >> a transition. get a little walk. not really. a little float. then we jump on the treadmill. of course you need a harness. if you were just on the treadmill and you ran, you would float away. so you need to get your harness on that will connect you to the treadmill. here you can do distance in time. so i can get the four miles done this way. >> you ran the boston marathon like this. >> finally. >> it was in december and the marathon was in april. it took me that long to build up to it. >> 2:30? >> no. >> a little longer. >> a little longer than that. >> what about your hydration and food requirements? do you take that into account for training and for the actual events? >> i always have a couple bags of water in the vicinity very

close by. >> this is how we send all the beverages to orbit. >> oh, yeah. they're all in dry form. there is an adapter assembly that has that inside that allows the addition of water using the rehydration station in orbit. in order to drink they'll insert the straw into the septum. hold it open and they can sip and they have a clamp to keep it from flowing out of the package. >> i imagine you want really energy dense foods that give you a lot of calories in a small amount of space. >> first of all, taste. you don't want to torture yourself with eating something you don't like. but a big consideration people have is how convenient it is. >> i imagine foods that are crumbly -- >> horrible. >> awful. you would get crumb everywhere. >> everywhere. people think, one of those things like potato chip. yeah, some people bring up little pringles and stuff but

they'll find out real quick it's a miss team a, it's a mistake. don't send big chocolate bars. you break them and there are little pieces flying everywhere. you want little mini's. my recommendation. >> as you can see, suni is no rookie. if all goes according to plan, we'll be racing while she is some 250 miles high in the sky. it will happen in about two months. last year, as you might remember. i had to pull out of the new york city triathlon the day before to go cover the famine in somalia. this year i'm ready. i'm wearing my fit bit trying to exercise on the road. i'm going to kick my training into high gear when i get home. so get ready, suni. it's on. coming up, living longer and better. my chasing life tip from cambodia. [ male announcer ] this is anna, her long day teaching the perfect swing

begins with back pain and a choice. take advil, and maybe have to take up to four in a day. or take aleve, which can relieve pain all day with just two pills. good eye.

. we are back with sgmd reporting from phnom penh. one of the thing you may know about cambodia is that the official religion is buddhism. you can see reminders of this just about everywhere you look. for example, this is a prayer area here in phnom penh. you see these sprinkled throughout the city and really the entire country. buddhist statue over there. you're reminded that there is a strong tradition of meditation along with buddhism. i've always been fascinated by this because of the proven health benefits of meditation. for example, if you meditate, you can actually reduce your stressful you can become more empathetic toward others. you can even increase your attention span. there's more than that. there is a recent study that showed simply immediate taigt can reduce your risk of heart disease. they found people who meditated for 20 minutes two time a day cut the rick of a heart attack and stroke by half. sounds pretty good. i do it myself. a lot of time i focus on a single word. my word is gentle. i focus on that word.

do i this in the morning. i do this in the evening. i can feel my blood pressure start to drop. i can feel high heart rate start to slow. my phrase is more meditation, less medication. i hope you enjoyed the show from phnom penh. unfortunately, that will wrap it up for us. let's keep the conversation going at cnn/sanjay. also join me on twitter. time for a look at your top stories in the cnn newsroom. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com hello. you are in the cnn newsroom. let's get you up to speed on the top stories. first off, two americans kidnapped overseas. now people who grabbed them are demands. it happened in the sinai peninsula. a pastor and a woman traveling with the group along with the egyptian tour guide were abducted. we're told they were stopped by wed wins and that's where they

are still being held. a few moments ago we spoke with an egyptian journalist following the developments there. >> i just spoke to the head of security in sinai and he is very positive the situation will be resolved shortly. i also spoke to the kidnappers a couple hours ago and they confirmed that the hostages are saved. unhard. >> we'll have full details on that when we go live to cairo in a few minutes. also in egypt, secretary of state hillary clinton meeting with the country's newly elected president mohammed morsi. egypt is nowhere near settled politically. there is no cabinet, no parliament and the new president is at odds with military office here's controlled egypt after hosni mubarak was ousted. clinton urged