Public health

The number of dengue fever cases in Cambodia has skyrocketed, with children hit hardest by the killer disease, according to new government figures.Incidences of dengue leapt by more than 300 per cent to 11,828 cases between January and September this year, compared to just 2,853 ...

An aggressive marketing campaign for a New Zealand brand of breast milk substitute – including giveaways to new parents in a hospital – has been condemned as “appalling” and “completely illegal” by a body that monitors Cambodia’s strict rules on the marketing of formula milk. ...

Kantha Bopha Jayavarman VII hospital here sees about 75 new babies born every night – not quite the falling birth rate it had been expecting just two years ago. ...

An unlicensed doctor allegedly at the centre of a medical scandal that has seen almost 300 residents of Battambang province’s Roka village infected with HIV proclaimed his innocence during the first day of his highly anticipated trial yesterday. After the judge read the charges to ...

Cambodia’s fight against malaria is at risk of being derailed because of a dispute over expenses payments between the Cambodian government and the Global Fund, the biggest donor to the country’s malaria programme. ...

The King and Queen Mother have awarded a royal residence in Koh Kong province to the director of the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospitals in a bid to relieve the financial burden on the facilities, which offer free treatment to all patients. ...

An unlicensed health worker charged in Cambodia with murder and other crimes after allegedly causing a mass HIV infection by treating patients with reused needles will be brought to trial next week, sources said. ...

Millions of dollars of aid money granted to Cambodia by the Global Fund to combat malaria have been left sitting in a bank account for more than a year, official documents seen by the Post show.The money remains untouched because the National Malaria Centre (CNM) ...

A set of new global standards for adolescent health care released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS this week indicate that a worldwide gap in health care provision for youths is magnified by Cambodia’s comparatively young population, officials and experts said yesterday. ...

Fires set by plantation owners in Indonesia may be to blame for the smog hanging over Phnom Penh, the Ministry of the Environment said yesterday. “I know there is a serious problem with haze,” Ministry spokesman Sao Sopheap told Khmer Times. “We have noticed haze ...

Hing Phon thought she was losing her mind when night after night terrifying nightmares jolted her awake as she dreamt of her husband, eldest son and 18 other relatives being killed by the Khmer Rouge during their brutal reign in Cambodia. ...

As Cambodia contends with one of the strongest El Niño cycles in recent memory, a new study of millions of dengue cases over the past two-decades-plus has shown that spikes in the deadly disease across Southeast Asia may be linked to the weather phenomenon.Upswings in ...

Tuberculosis (TB) is still a major health problem in Cambodia. Natalie Lorent, PhD student at the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) and the University of Antwerp (UA), conducted her research in the slums of Phnom Penh, where tuberculosis (TB) wreaks havoc. Lorent and her team ...

An unlicensed pharmacy in Siem Reap City that sold a traditional Chinese nutritional supplement the manufacturer claims can treat “100 diseases” was shut down on Wednesday after a 72-year-old man died after taking a dose, officials said Thursday. ...

A medical doctor accused of fraud by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court admitted at trial yesterday to swindling $10,000 and a car from his business partners as they were setting up a pharmacy earlier this year.​ ...

Government officials and public health workers met with about 100 students at the Ministry of Health’s school of nursing in Phnom Penh on Monday to mark World Rabies Day, calling for a united effort to eradicate a virus that kills hundreds of Cambodians each year. ...

A doctor is on the run following the death of a young woman in Kompong Thom province, who died on Friday after receiving an injection from the doctor at an unlicensed clinic, police said Sunday. ...

Cambodia is now free of “blue-ear” pig disease, which had infected more than 4,000 pigs in five provinces last month, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday. ...

Cambodian health officials say they remain on alert for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS. Cambodia has trained hundreds of health workers to respond to the disease, though no infections have yet been reported in Cambodia, Ly Sovann, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health, ...

Dengue fever has killed 24 people so far this year, most of them children. As dengue fever cases continue to rise in Siem Reap province, the statistics seem scary. Death by dengue, however, is most often due to complications stemming from multiple infections coupled with ...

The Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday that the spread of the swine illness “blue-ear disease” is starting to decline, but urged for strict controls to be maintained on the transport of pigs around the country. ...

A Banteay Meanchey province clinic accused of malpractice after the death of a 4-month-old baby last week was cleared of wrongdoing by a group of investigators from the provincial Health Department. ...

Indigenous villagers in northeastern Cambodia’s Stung Treng province on Monday called for an investigation into a saw mill they say has polluted their local waterway and caused residents to contract a skin disease. ...

A clinic owner in Banteay Meanchey’s Poipet town settled out of court for an undisclosed sum on Saturday after a family accused him of malpractice following the death of their 4-month-old daughter, though the cause of death remained unclear yesterday. ...