Public health

Authorities suspect that a new case of H5N1, or bird flu, has emerged in Mondulkiri province after more than 60 villagers’ chickens fell ill.Sok Kheang, chief of the provincial agriculture and fisheries department, said more than 60 chickens in Keo Seima district had fallen ill ...

Cambodia saw 6,372 dengue fever cases in 2017, down 50 percent from 12,843 cases in a year earlier, a senior health official said on Tuesday. Huy Rekol, director of the National Center for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control, said the virus killed three children, aged between ...

More than 10 students at Bak Chenhchean senior high school in Pursat province’s Phnom Kravanh district fainted yesterday. Major Tann Kearith, district police chief, said the students fainted at about 9am and were sent to the provincial referral hospital following the incident. ...

Estimates suggest that 0.38 percent of Cambodians have contracted TB, an alarming statistic for a country still recovering from decades of conflict. This rate shows an improvement from the early 2000s, when up to 1.5 percent of Cambodians had the disease. Even so, villagers who live far ...

Cambodia’s National Cancer Center – a more than $23 million modern teaching facility – was inaugurated at Calmette Hospital yesterday, though the centre’s director and experts acknowledged that oncology services still fall well below the country’s demand. ...

Nearly 300 chickens and ducks were culled after a new case of H5N1, or bird flu, was found in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district last week, officials said. Seang Borin, director of the municipal agriculture department, said yesterday that 292 chickens and ducks were killed in ...

A national network of people living with HIV, which has been key in helping coordinate anti-HIV services at the grassroots level, is now being excluded from a new Global Fund grant, raising “deep” concerns, according to NGOs and a leaked internal email sent to government ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen today announced plans to offer free health care to cyclo drivers and to form a foundation to help preserve them as a tourist attraction. ...

The Health Minister has ordered civil servants to prioritise the implementation of new social security services for public officials, former government workers and veterans, which came into force at the start of this year. ...

Officials from the Ministry of Health said the numbers of malaria cases was roughly similar in 2017 as it was in 2016.​Authorities only reported one death from malaria this year, but sill called for people to take every possible measure to prevent the disease.​ ...

The Phnom Penh governor said he would crack down on pharmacies who do not follow the laws of the Health Ministry. Governor Khuong Sreng vowed to ban practices such as the selling of medication without a license and the dissemination of illegal medications, and to search ...

The government and the Global Fund have signed a grant agreement worth more than $55 million to implement anti-AIDS and tuberculosis programmes in Cambodia from 2018 to 2020. ...

Out of four Southeast Asian countries, migrant workers from Cambodia have the worst experiences, with eight in 10 experiencing labour rights abuses while abroad and more than two-thirds reporting mental or physical health problems upon return, according to a study released by ILO and IOM ...

A new study has found that external donors wield outsize influence in determining national health care policies in Cambodia. The research was published earlier this month in the journal of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The study focused on Cambodia and Pakistan, ...

After a yearlong campaign to register health providers, the Ministry of Health and medical councils now say they must turn their focus to training and oversight of nurses and doctors in the field. ...

Japan has provided more than $300,000 to aid the government in its construction of a road and three hospitals in four provinces. The $329,736 grant was signed at the Japanese embassy yesterday by the Japanese ambassador, the director of the Preah Vihear provincial department of public ...

A Ministry of Health official yesterday said the ministry has banned the buying and selling of antibiotics without a prescription in an effort to curb the overuse that has led to an alarming level of antibiotic resistance in the Kingdom. ...

Kantha Bopha hospitals have treated almost 17 million children and pregnant women at a cost of $632 million, the organisation said, as it celebrated its 25th anniversary last week. ...

Researchers have found that a little-studied variety of threadworm – strongyloides stercoralis – previously thought to be relatively benign is associated with “significant morbidity” in rural Cambodia. Peter Odermatt, a professor at Basel University in Switzerland who headed the team, said the researchers had been ...

A group of anonymous civil society organisations, people living with HIV and others has raised “grave” concerns regarding funding from the Global Fund, the largest donor to the fight against HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in the Kingdom – as well as Cambodia’s allocation process to ...

In a speech to some 15,000 garment workers in Phnom Penh yesterday, Prime Minister Hun Sen returned to the topic of the United States’ war legacy in Cambodia, pledging to build a health centre for people purportedly suffering the after-effects of American chemical weapons in Svay ...

Indian companies in the pharmaceutical and health care sector are seeking to enhance their footprint in the Kingdom by extending beyond pharmaceutical trade through state financing that could establish a direct link to bring Cambodian medical tourists to the subcontinent. ...

Women in the armed forces will receive a $200 bonus when they give birth to a child, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced yesterday. Addressing a graduate ceremony, Mr Hun Sen said female public servants have received a baby bonus since 2006, but mothers in the armed ...

Government officials yesterday destroyed more than 80 tonnes of counterfeit chemical products, chief among them hazardous skin-whitening creams and knock-off Viagra pills.​ ...