Public health

Tuesday marked World Toilet Day, the annual attempt to push the issue of open defecation back into the spotlight and highlight the preventable illnesses that are caused by what is still a very common practice in Cambodia, which has the lowest toilet coverage in Southeast ...

While Cambodia is often touted as a regional success story in terms of HIV/AIDS prevention, the prevalence of the disease among men who have sex with men, sex workers and intravenous drug users remains a concern, according to a report by UNAIDS released Tuesday. Infections have ...

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has pledged to help Cambodia with electoral reforms, following a request by Prime Minister Hun Sen to send experts to the country ahead of future polls and amid an ongoing dispute over national elections held more than three months ago. The ...

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria announced Thursday it had suspended contracts with two international suppliers of mosquito nets after uncovering serious financial wrongdoing in Cambodia. ... The move followed a probe by Global Fund inspectors into claims of corruption at the suppliers, ...

The Cambodian Ministry of Heath (MOH) reported today the confirmation of two additional of human H5N1 avian influenza cases, the 25th and 26th cases of 2013, according to a Joint Press Release from the MOH and the World Health Organization (WHO) dated Nov. 14. According to ...

UK retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) is trialling a new campaign aimed at helping 14,000 garment workers in Cambodia deal with common health issues, as part of its Plan A ethical programme. The company, which aims to become the world's most sustainable major retailer by 2015, ...

Fifty people have died from dengue fever in the first 10 months of this year, a decrease of 72 percent on the same period last year when 176 deaths were recorded, the National Center for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control said Monday. Continuing a month-on-month trend, ...

A ten-year-old boy died of bird flu on Saturday, bringing the death toll of the fatal disease to 13 in Cambodia so far this year, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said. "We regret to announce that the boy passed away in Kantha Bopha Hospital this ...

About 20 leprosy patients have been treated at a rehabilitated and expanded wing of the Battambang Provincial Referral Hospital, the second hospital to offer professional treatment for leprosy patients in Cambodia. “We have two doctors and one nurse who specialize in leprosy treatment, and in the ...

The country’s draft $3.4 billion national budget for 2014 proposes yet another $920 million in new debt to make ends meet, the same amount taken on this year, according to a copy of the spending bill obtained Thursday. The draft budget calls for nearly $400 million—or ...

After repeatedly equivocating about whether it has lifted a 2011 freeze on new lending to Cambodia in response to the government’s forced evictions of families in Phnom Penh, the World Bank has said that the suspension is still firmly in place. “The World Bank has not ...

Cambodia has been the country regionally worst affected by bird flu in humans this year—with 23 cases compared to just two in Vietnam and none in Thailand—largely due to the difference in poultry farming, an official with the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) is requesting that $15 million be allocated to Cambodia from a new $100 million grant to stop the spread of resistance to the best available drugs currently used to fight malaria. Eva Christophel, the WHO’s regional malaria adviser in Manila, said ...

A two-year-old girl from northwestern Pursat province was confirmed positive for human H5N1 avian influenza after she was admitted to the Jayavarman VII Hospital in Siem Reap province on Oct. 25 with fever, running nose, lethargy, dyspnea, cough and breathing difficulties. She died on Oct.26. This ...

The total number of Cambodian children immunized in the nationwide campaign with measles and rubella vaccines has already reached one million, the Ministry of Health announced Tuesday. Health Minister Mam Bunheng launched the campaign against these two children's diseases on Oct. 21, aiming to vaccinate all ...

The government will likely sell a Japanese-style medical service to Cambodia in a package that includes an emergency care center, a medical graduate school and an insurance system. The government has decided to seek a market for the medical service in emerging nations in the Association ...

Herbalife Ltd, a global nutrition company whose business practices are being challenged in a US court and whose marketing strategies have been the subject of public criticism, will officially open a six-storey distribution centre in Phnom Penh today, according to the New York Stock Exchange-listed ...

Teenage pregnancies are hindering Cambodia’s development as young mothers are unlikely to finish school and therefore lack job opportunities, government and U.N. officials said at the launch of a global report on adolescent pregnancies on Wednesday. “The Ministry of Women’s Affairs acknowledges that adolescent pregnancies have ...

The Ministry of Health (MoH) of the Kingdom of Cambodia has announced a new human case of H5N1 avian influenza, according to a ministry press release Wednesday. The case is a 6-year-old girl from Romdoul village, O Romdoul commune, Phnom Preuk district, Battambang province confirmed positive ...

Cambodia is making headway on its 2015 Millennium Development Goal to improve maternal health and is ahead of its target to reduce its under-five child mortality rate, but it still lags behind neighbouring countries, the 2013 State of the World Population Report has revealed. Released yesterday, ...

The International Labour Organisation’s Better Factories Cambodia program (BFC) releases the first report from its mobile phone call-in project aimed at educating garment and footwear workers. The mobile phone project entitled Kamako Chhnoeum (‘Outstanding Worker’ in Khmer) received 3,245 valid phone calls in its first two ...

DAMBE DISTRICT, Kompong Cham Province – Lying on makeshift stretchers, seated in cheap wheelchairs, blind people wearing dark glasses, children with twisted limbs and slack jaws—all sat on the dirt clasping smoking sticks of incense and muttering quiet prayers Tuesday, hoping to be healed. ... Among ...

A group of NGOs condemned rampant abuses of sexual and reproductive health rights in Cambodia last week, just days before the government submitted a human rights progress report to the United Nations. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Network of ...

Trade and tourism between Indonesia and Cambodia is growing but the two countries can still increase cooperation in those fields, according to participants in the 7th Indonesian Trade and Tourism Promotion exhibition on Phnom Penh’s Koh Pich on Sunday. The sale of Indonesian pharmaceuticals, food products ...