Public health

Taking strides to curb Cambodia’s high maternal and child mortality rates, health officials yesterday launched a $14 million initiative to improve women’s limited access to reproductive health care. During the three-year Partnering to Save Lives campaign, funded by AusAid, NGOs Care Cambodia, Marie Stopes and Save ...

Researchers at the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases have isolated a new class of drugs that could be used to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis, a disease that affects thousands of Cambodians, according to a report published in the journal Science Translational Medicine last week. The drugs, called indolcarboxamides, work ...

The offices of Herbalife, a so-called multilevel marketing company that has moved into the protein powder market in Cambodia, stand like a beacon of promise in Phnom Penh’s Prampi Makara district: Six stories of glass and white paneling, crisp lime-green signage and a four-story-high banner ...

An expatriate living in Phnom Penh has set up a fund to raise $3,000 over the next month to help pay the medical expenses of a student shot in the spine by a police officer at the SL Garment Factory workers’ protest last month. Hoeurn Chann, ...

Injecting methamphetamines is on the rise in Cambodia, particularly among younger addicts, as recreational users have begun to switch from smoking and pill-popping to mainlining, a report by the Australian National Council on Drugs suggests. The report, released yesterday, details how amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) and their ...

As temperatures drop during the cool season, children, infants and the elderly should take extra measures to ward off common seasonal illnesses, officials from the Ministry of Health said on Wednesday. In a press release issued by the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization’s ...

The Ministry of Health said Thursday it would shut down a Phnom Penh health center that claims to cure diseases such as cancer and diabetes with the help of detoxifying machines, according to officials. Immanuel Bicom True Healing Center in Chamkar Mon district did not have ...

A medical team of 10 Chinese ophthalmologists from the Beijing Tongren Hospital have helped operate on eye patients in Cambodia as a part of the celebrations of the 55th anniversary of China-Cambodia diplomatic ties. The team have spent a two-day humanitarian mission at the Preah Ketomelea ...

An investigation by BBC news program Panorama into the misuse of Global Fund aid to Cambodia has claimed that the Fund “watered down” a report released last month, which exposed a network of corruption in Cambodia’s health sector. But Panorama, which obtained a leaked copy of the original ...

Phnom Penh could have its first international-standard medical facility if a Japanese plan to construct a critical-care center equipped with state-of-the-art medical technologies and highly trained doctors, nurses and surgeons goes ahead, according to local officials and Japanese government documents. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced ...

The prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS infections in Cambodia has declined to 0.7 percent in 2013, down from 0.8 percent two years ago, a senior government official said Sunday. “According to scientific estimation, in 2013, HIV carrier rate among adults aged between 15 and 49 years is ...

Officials from Svay Rieng’s provincial health department are rounding up expired medications that medical staff and villagers are believed to have pocketed while clearing a stockpile near the provincial hospital on Wednesday, local health officials said yesterday. Provincial medical staff alerted the provincial health department after ...

The battle against landmines could soon have an unlikely new weapon after a pioneering Belgian NGO signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government on Monday to begin testing teams of sharp-sniffing rodents in Cambodia, with the goal of pitching them into the ongoing ...

Forty-eight Cambodians will graduate today from what is being heralded as the Kingdom’s first speech-therapy training program. The graduates have been trained to fill a void in speech- and language-therapy services for an estimated 536,000 people in Cambodia affected by communication and swallowing disorders, according to ...

A World Bank report highlighting the rate of Cambodian children exposed to second-hand cigarette smoke has bolstered calls to increase tobacco taxes threefold. The World Bank report, which was released on November 20 and titled Risking Your Health, claims nearly 50 per cent of all Cambodians under ...

With the vast majority of rural Cambodians still lacking access to a toilet, and suffering the incumbent health risks, Ministry of Rural Development officials on Monday renewed long-standing intentions to improve the country’s sanitation infrastructure. Just days after World Toilet Day, the officials surveyed villages ...

Four trade unions on Tuesday demanded that Cambodia’s garment and footwear manufacturers raise the minimum wage of their workers and provide them with additional benefits, threatening a nationwide strike and demonstrations if they do not comply. In a joint letter to the Van Sou Ieng, president ...

More than 1,000 people marched to the Kompong Thom provincial referral hospital on Saturday to mark World Diabetes Day and raise awareness of the chronic disease, which affects 3 percent of Cambodians and is increasing due to changing diets. Saturday’s event was organized by Mopotsyo, a ...

n the ponds and rice paddies of the Cambodian countryside, trying to catch frogs can be deadly. Along Cambodia’s rivers, floodlands and lowlands live millions of venomous snakes, 10 species of which can be lethal if you disturb their slumber. Last week, a 13-year-old teenager from Kompong ...

A recent claim by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) that a public health officer accused of demanding bribes to manipulate lucrative contracts did nothing wrong contradicts admissions of illegal activity by both the government and the officer himself, according to interviews and email messages reproduced in ...

Cambodia reported 33,770 malaria cases in the first ten months of the year, a drop of 43 percent from 59,670 cases a year earlier, Xinhua news agency reported a health official as saying Saturday. A total of eight patients died during the ten-month period, down 78 ...

The government’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) said Friday that it has investigated the public procurements of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology and STD Control (NCHADS) and found they were carried out correctly, despite an exhaustive investigation by the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and ...

The Vietnamese Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) company, the majority shareholder of several economic land concessions in Ratanakkiri province, on Friday rebuffed accusations that it had logged forests and forced evictions, claiming that its activities improved the environment and the livelihoods of locals. Through several companies, ...

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on Thursday denied reports that its suspension of all contracts with two major mosquito net suppliers found to have bribed Cambodian officials would cause a shortage in the worldwide supply of the critical malaria deterrent, but ...