Mental health and social services

The Ministry of Social Affairs has completed drafting a law on juvenile justice that will soon be moved forward for approval and debate at the legislature. The new law, as drafted, aims to provide rehabilitation opportunities for juveniles, rather than simple prison sentences, and meets ...

Victims of sexual violence can often have difficulty reintegrating into society, but experts say the healing process from such assault can be a lifelong struggle. ...

Dr. Thearith helps thousands of women in Kampong Chhnang province care for their babies. He provides them with advice about how to breastfeed, how to keep their infants from contracting malaria, and how to avoid infections. ...

Cambodia’s budget for mental health care must be increased dramatically if the government aims to properly respond to the mounting demand for services in the Kingdom, health experts said yesterday. ...

About one in 25 Cambodians have speech and swallowing disorders, with tens of thousands dying each year due to related complications, according to experts. ...

Officials from the Ministry of Health’s national eye health program yesterday released a report announcing that trachoma, an eye infection that can lead to blindness, is no longer a public health problem in Cambodia. ...

About 100 homeless and mentally ill Cambodians who are being detained in a center on the outskirts of Phnom Penh implored an opposition lawmaker on Tuesday to request that the facility serve them better quality food and stop torture and other rights abuses. ...

“Roasting”—a Cambodian tradition that sees new mothers lie on beds over a fire for several days in the belief it will scare off evil spirits and warm the body after giving birth—is one of many dangerous but deeply rooted practices that midwives and health practitioners ...

Following the first case of the potentially deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome being confirmed in Thailand on Thursday, government officials in Cambodia said entry points into the country were already equipped to prevent the disease from spreading here. ...

Government authorities in a southwest Cambodian province are planning a coordinated campaign to round up residents suffering from mental illness and take them to Buddhist temples where they will be cared for by monks, a provincial official said. ...

Dengue fever cases in the Kingdom have increased by nearly 80 per cent compared with the same period last year, and the Cambodia National Malaria Center (CNM) said yesterday that it expects a continued surge throughout 2015. ...

An education campaign launched by Cambodia’s National Immunization Program (NIP) in the aftermath of last year’s HIV outbreak in Battambang has been effective in dispelling the concerns of parents hesitant to get their children vaccinated, government health bodies and the World Health Organization have said. ...

Survivors of human trafficking in South-East Asia require better access to health services, especially related to mental health, a study says. ...

Almost 450 people were rounded up from the capital’s streets last year and sent to the notorious Prey Speu social affairs centre, where in November a man died after being denied medical treatment, according to an annual report from Phnom Penh’s Social Affairs Department. ...

The Kingdom has seen vast improvements in nutrition, general health and mortality rates over the past four years, according to the preliminary results of the fourth Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey (CDHS) released yesterday. ...

Born with cerebral palsy, 5-year-old Chhen Sivong has trouble walking, standing and raising his arms, but he also struggles with an even more fundamental motor skill: swallowing. Around the time he turned one, the little boy began having problems eating solid food, which upset both Sivong ...

Forty-eight Cambodians will graduate today from what is being heralded as the Kingdom’s first speech-therapy training program. The graduates have been trained to fill a void in speech- and language-therapy services for an estimated 536,000 people in Cambodia affected by communication and swallowing disorders, according to ...

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, ...

About 300,000 women of reproductive age will receive higher-quality emergency obstetric and newborn-care services thanks to a sizeable handover of medical equipment and supplies to government health centres and hospitals in Kampong Thom, Kampot and Kep provinces. Through a partnership seeking to improve the social healthcare ...

With the promise of better care for both mother and baby during labour, the Maternal Child Medical Centre was inaugurated yesterday at the Siem Reap Provincial Hospital. The inauguration was presided over by Deputy Prime Minister Tea Banh, who said the centre was the first of ...

Additional investments in family planning yields economic benefits and would save developing countries more than US$11 billion annually, according to a UN report. Better access to family planning in developing countries would reduce costs for maternal and newborn health care by $11.3 billion per year, according ...

The mental health sector faces a sever lack of funding that could ultimately undermine Cambodia’s development and the governemnt’s own health care goals, concludes a new report by the human rights law center at Fordham University in New York. In a comparative study on Cambodia’s mental ...