Priority health concerns

The Ministry of Health yesterday warned people to be aware of the new avian influenza strain H7N9, which has spread to poultry in China and neighbouring countries. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered the government to draw up a plan to fund the country’s popular Kantha Bopha children’s hospitals on Monday, four months after the long-serving director of the foundation that runs them resigned. ...

Cambodia has made significant progress in HIV treatment, taking the lead regionally by reaching 80 percent of those living with the virus and becoming one of only seven countries globally to reach target treatment goals, according to a U.N. report released on Thursday. ...

Global Fund will provide $98 million to fight malaria, tuberculosis and AIDs from 2018 to 2020, an official said on Thursday, with the donor seemingly banking on improved oversight to prevent alleged government fraud and nepotism it described as recently as March. ...

France has pledged nearly $400,000 to set up maternal health and early childhood services, including child care centers, at a dozen garment factories across Cambodia, the French Embassy said on Wednesday. ...

The ministry yesterday used National Dengue Campaign Day to announce that there were 1,133 reported dengue cases in the first 24 weeks of this year and just one fatality, compared with 2,447 dengue cases and five deaths in the same period last year. ...

The Indian Embassy to Cambodia has given a $50,000 grant for a project to help stop the spread of tuberculosis in the kingdom. During a press conference at the National Centre for Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control (CENAT) on Friday, Operation ASHA programme director Dr Narith ...

A study published in the Malaria Journal last week suggests that to combat malaria, the outmoded approach of mass anti-malarial drug administration may be effective, but only if local community leaders play a prominent role. ...

More than 86 percent of 3,151 sex workers surveyed across 18 provinces regularly use condoms with clients, according to research released yesterday by the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology and STDs. But only 27 percent consistently use condoms during sexual intercourse with their husbands, boyfriends ...

A report by the Global Fund’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has confirmed evidence of corruption and nepotism at Cambodia’s National Malaria Centre (CNM), first revealed by The Post last year, calling the centre’s oversight “dysfunctional and unauditable”. ...

Cambodia has been asked to more than double its yearly contribution toward the fight against HIV/AIDS to at least $3.2 million in each of the next three years, an official from the National AIDS Authority said yesterday. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen called for renewed effort to wipe out malaria in Cambodia by 2025 in a message to mark World Malaria Day on Tuesday. There were 23,627 cases of malaria in the country last year, a decrease of 54 percent compared with 2015, which ...

The US government has pulled any future funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a group focused on reproductive rights for women and girls, over claims it has practiced coercive abortions and involuntary sterilizations in China.   ...

Doctor Beat Richner, the prominent Swiss-born doctor credited with resurrecting the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospitals – which have treated millions of patients free of charge since 1992 – stepped down from his more than two-decade role of managing the hospitals, citing a serious illness. ...

The government yesterday announced a total ban on the collection and export of human breast milk, after it emerged poor women had been earning cash through the trade. ...

A lack of diagnostic equipment in Cambodia is causing cases of tuberculosis to be both over- and under-reported in children, a new study finds.   ...

Health officials have urged people to take care when buying food beyond its use-by date or suspected to be chemically contaminated after more than 60 students in Takeo province became ill from eating noodles. ...

The Cambodian government and UNICEF yesterday released results of a clinical trial on new locally produced food supplements to tackle the country’s persistently dismal malnutrition figures, with at least one of the two products proving effective.   ...

Health officials in Svay Rieng province, which was hit by an outbreak of bird flu (H5N1) early this month, said the virus has been stopped and there was no sign of a continuing outbreak.   ...

Cambodia’s first lady appealed to civil servants and health workers to improve efforts to reduce maternal and child deaths in conjunction with the National Day on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health today. ...

Although infant mortality rates have dropped dramatically over the past 15 years, a new report in the journal Healthcare has identified significant shortcomings in newborn care in Cambodia.   ...

Mobile phone technology could be an effective means to promote improved health practices among Cambodia’s female entertainment workers and help curb the spread of HIV, according to a new study conducted by the organisation KHANA and the Center for Global Health Research at Touro University ...

A toxic culture of masculinity in Cambodia is contributing to the spread of HIV from husbands to wives, according to a study in the American Journal of Men’s Health. ...

Hundreds of chickens and ducks infected with H5N1 bird flu have been culled in Svay Reing province after an outbreak of the virus last week, the first reported cases since November 2015. ...