Social development

Malaria infections in Cambodia and the Greater Mekong sub-region fell overall in 2015, according to health officials. But the continuing spread of drug-resistant parasites that cause the disease remains a major concern for local and international health authorities. ...

Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong is in China this week for official talks aimed at strengthening trade and security ties. ...

The Medical Council of Cambodia and the Ministry of Health are working on a draft law that would force malpractice complaints to go through the council before they make it to a courtroom, an MCC official said yesterday. ...

Health Minister Mam Bunheng responded to the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) after it received an anonymous complaint that the diet pill MAZETA Slim, which is unlicensed in Cambodia and therefore illegal to sell, is still being distributed by pharmacies around the Kingdom. According to ministry tests, ...

The first graduates of a special training program for elite forest rangers began work this month in Preah Vihear’s protected forest.The 29 newly-minted rangers will be responsible for leading efforts to stop illegal logging, land clearance, and poaching in a forest that is home to ...

Officials from the National Center for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control (CNM) of the Health Ministry will visit three sites in Phnom Penh today in order to catch and test mosquitoes and larvae for the Zika virus.   ...

An international health NGO has launched a new “crowd-sourcing” surveillance system to be used by the government in monitoring infectious diseases. ...

More than 220 ethnic Tompuon families in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district yesterday filed a complaint to rights group Adhoc over a 2,000-hectare land dispute against an economic land concession.   ...

Eating fortified rice increases the risk of hookworm infections, a study in Cambodian schoolchildren shows, suggesting that the rice’s added nutrients inadvertently help parasites grow. ...

A study of the Kingdom’s district health system has found it “unable to manage” non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and hypertension, which are estimated to be responsible for more than half of adult deaths.    ...

Amid fears that the Zika virus could jump to Southeast Asia after its rapid spread through South America, the Cambodian Ministry of Health has asked citizens to take precautions to avoid mosquito bites. In a press release sent Friday, the ministry urged people to wear ...

Efforts to empower women at a sub-national level are drastically under-funded, according to research released yesterday. ...

After almost 15 years working at various economic-related agencies, primarily the ministry of economy and finance, H.E. Hang Chuon Naron has been at the forefront of transforming Cambodia’s broken economy into one that is more open and competitive. Since 2013 he has been minister of ...

Human Rights Watch (HRW), long one of the most strident critics of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his ruling party, again slammed the government on Wednesday for its failure to uphold human rights in Cam­bodia, with the release of its World Report 2016. ...

Three months after the Health Ministry proclaimed Cambodia measles-free—after tests on a child suspected to be carrying the disease came back negative—it announced on Wednesday that a 7-month-old in Kompong Speu province has contracted the highly contagious virus. It is the first confirmed case in ...

Cambodia scored very poorly on a perceived corruption index, put out each year by Transparency International, but a government spokesman says the report doesn’t reflect the “effort” the government has put into combating the practice. ...

Cambodian democracy regressed last year, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2015 Democracy Index, which indicates that the Kingdom is “on the cusp of the ‘authoritarian regime’ category”. ...

A farm in Kompong Thom province that supplies Thai agro-industry giant Charoen Pokphand (CP) dumped the carcasses of 11,500 diseased chickens into an irrigation canal on Sunday, poisoning the waterway and endangering local livestock, according to officials. ...

Ahead of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s planned visit to Cambodia this week, local and international NGOs have urged Mr. Kerry not to sign any new bilateral agreements unless Cambodia vows to improve its human rights and democracy efforts. ...

In response to the Facebook comment of a medical student, Prime Minister Hun Sen has decided to lower the final exam fee for medical students from about $125 to $25. ...

The maker of a new tuk-tuk prototype retrofitted with a wheelchair ramp hopes to usher in a new era of wheelchair-friendly travel in Phnom Penh. ...

A disease expert in Cambodia said on Friday that although the Zika virus—which has recently been linked to birth defects and paralysis in South America—had circulated in Cambodia in the past, there had been no reported cases of the virus here for three years, though ...

Patrick Heuveline sat among villagers in Cambodia, showing them photos of his daughter to establish common ground with a group of people whose culture he had yet to fully understand.Heuveline, a UCLA sociology professor since 2007, has now spent about 15 years studying the effects ...

Each morning, Phan Kha drags her cart full of mussels through the streets of Phnom Penh. She pulls the cart up to 20 kilometers a day, and on a good day, she makes $10. ...