Public health

About 20 leprosy patients have been treated at a rehabilitated and expanded wing of the Battambang Provincial Referral Hospital, the second hospital to offer professional treatment for leprosy patients in Cambodia. “We have two doctors and one nurse who specialize in leprosy treatment, and in the ...

The country’s draft $3.4 billion national budget for 2014 proposes yet another $920 million in new debt to make ends meet, the same amount taken on this year, according to a copy of the spending bill obtained Thursday. The draft budget calls for nearly $400 million—or ...

After repeatedly equivocating about whether it has lifted a 2011 freeze on new lending to Cambodia in response to the government’s forced evictions of families in Phnom Penh, the World Bank has said that the suspension is still firmly in place. “The World Bank has not ...

Cambodia has been the country regionally worst affected by bird flu in humans this year—with 23 cases compared to just two in Vietnam and none in Thailand—largely due to the difference in poultry farming, an official with the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) is requesting that $15 million be allocated to Cambodia from a new $100 million grant to stop the spread of resistance to the best available drugs currently used to fight malaria. Eva Christophel, the WHO’s regional malaria adviser in Manila, said ...

A two-year-old girl from northwestern Pursat province was confirmed positive for human H5N1 avian influenza after she was admitted to the Jayavarman VII Hospital in Siem Reap province on Oct. 25 with fever, running nose, lethargy, dyspnea, cough and breathing difficulties. She died on Oct.26. This ...

The total number of Cambodian children immunized in the nationwide campaign with measles and rubella vaccines has already reached one million, the Ministry of Health announced Tuesday. Health Minister Mam Bunheng launched the campaign against these two children’s diseases on Oct. 21, aiming to vaccinate all ...

The government will likely sell a Japanese-style medical service to Cambodia in a package that includes an emergency care center, a medical graduate school and an insurance system. The government has decided to seek a market for the medical service in emerging nations in the Association ...

Herbalife Ltd, a global nutrition company whose business practices are being challenged in a US court and whose marketing strategies have been the subject of public criticism, will officially open a six-storey distribution centre in Phnom Penh today, according to the New York Stock Exchange-listed ...

Teenage pregnancies are hindering Cambodia’s development as young mothers are unlikely to finish school and therefore lack job opportunities, government and U.N. officials said at the launch of a global report on adolescent pregnancies on Wednesday. “The Ministry of Women’s Affairs acknowledges that adolescent pregnancies have ...

The Ministry of Health (MoH) of the Kingdom of Cambodia has announced a new human case of H5N1 avian influenza, according to a ministry press release Wednesday. The case is a 6-year-old girl from Romdoul village, O Romdoul commune, Phnom Preuk district, Battambang province confirmed positive ...

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, ...

The International Labour Organisation’s Better Factories Cambodia program (BFC) releases the first report from its mobile phone call-in project aimed at educating garment and footwear workers. The mobile phone project entitled Kamako Chhnoeum (‘Outstanding Worker’ in Khmer) received 3,245 valid phone calls in its first two ...

DAMBE DISTRICT, Kompong Cham Province – Lying on makeshift stretchers, seated in cheap wheelchairs, blind people wearing dark glasses, children with twisted limbs and slack jaws—all sat on the dirt clasping smoking sticks of incense and muttering quiet prayers Tuesday, hoping to be healed. Among ...

A group of NGOs condemned rampant abuses of sexual and reproductive health rights in Cambodia last week, just days before the government submitted a human rights progress report to the United Nations. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Network of ...

Trade and tourism between Indonesia and Cambodia is growing but the two countries can still increase cooperation in those fields, according to participants in the 7th Indonesian Trade and Tourism Promotion exhibition on Phnom Penh’s Koh Pich on Sunday. The sale of Indonesian pharmaceuticals, food products ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s new Cabinet on Friday approved a 2014 draft budget of $3.5 billion, a 13 percent increase over this year’s budget, but gave no details as to how the money would be spent. The CPP also said it will go ahead with a ...

As two volunteers guided a man unsteady on his feet into a medical tent on the second day of a three-day pro-opposition demonstration at Freedom Park yesterday, Chan Bun Han instructed another to get the patient a bottle of water after they laid him on ...

As the flood levels recede in most of the 20 affected provinces, victims continue facing scores of recovery challenges including sanitation, food security, health and shelter concerns, as well as a lack of potable water. In its fourth report on the flood situation, released yesterday, the ...

An eight-year-old girl from Cambodia’s eastern Kampong Thom province has been confirmed for the H5N1 virus, bringing the number of the cases to 21 so far this year, a joint statement by the World Health Organization and the Cambodian Health Ministry said Tuesday. The little girl ...

Cambodia recorded 29,631 malaria cases in the first nine months of 2013, down 46 percent from the 54,464 cases over the same period last year, the figures of the National Center for Malaria showed Monday. During the January-September period this year, the disease killed only 7 ...

Cambodia’s largest-ever immunisation program will launch today with the introduction of a new vaccine against rubella and measles, World Health Organization officials said yesterday. The Ministry of Health aims to inoculate more than four million children between the ages of nine months and 15 years before ...

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) office in Cambodia said Sunday that a new figure showed that about 2,000 Cambodian children die every year of diarrheal diseases due to lack of safe water, sanitation and basic hygiene. “In Cambodia, perhaps 2,000 die of diarrhea each year. ...

Cambodia has reached its millennium development goal of re­ducing by half the number of people who suffer from hunger, but more needs to be done to make sure that the population now re­ceives the right nutrients, officials said on World Food Day Wednesday. Making the announcement ...