Public health

Prime Minister Hun Sen has called for stronger enforcement of regulations on the promotion and sale of baby formula, linking a decrease in the number of women who breast-feed to an increase in un­lawful and misleading advertising that misrepresents milk substitutes and deceives new mothers. ...

Som Saron has not worked since testing positive for HIV late last year. Taking care of her young niece at her parents’ home in Roka commune last week, the 37-year-old said that a fear of being stigmatized kept her from walking the community’s gravel roads selling ...

Three weeks after the Health Ministry announced that measles had reappeared in Cambodia, a ministry official said Thursday that the highly contagious disease had in fact not been found. ...

Baby formula companies are pushing their products in clinics and on health care professionals—some with great effect—despite a government ban on such acts and extensive research showing that formula is an inferior alternative to mother’s milk. ...

The percentage of smokers over the age of 15 has dropped from 19.5 percent in 2011 to 16.9 percent last year, according to the National Adult Tobacco Survey which was released yesterday by the National Institute of Statistics. ...

A doctor who had been accused of causing a woman to die in labour because he abandoned her during childbirth to go to a party had charges against him dropped by the Court of Appeal on Monday. ...

A Cambodian medical research­er has received international rec­ognition for a presentation on de­velopments in the treatment of pa­tients infected with both HIV and tuberculosis at a conference in France last week. ...

Cambodia’s efforts in HIV prevention and treatment have shown significant results in the past ten years and the government is now setting the bar even higher. Last December, Prime Minister Hun Sen committed to stopping new HIV infections by 2020. ...

More than 20 HIV-infected villagers provided testimony during the third day of the trial of an unlicensed medic—accused of infecting more than 270 people with the virus—at the Battambang Provincial Court on Thursday, a court official said. ...

The number of dengue fever cases in Cambodia has skyrocketed, with children hit hardest by the killer disease, according to new government figures.Incidences of dengue leapt by more than 300 per cent to 11,828 cases between January and September this year, compared to just 2,853 ...

An aggressive marketing campaign for a New Zealand brand of breast milk substitute – including giveaways to new parents in a hospital – has been condemned as “appalling” and “completely illegal” by a body that monitors Cambodia’s strict rules on the marketing of formula milk. ...

Kantha Bopha Jayavarman VII hospital here sees about 75 new babies born every night – not quite the falling birth rate it had been expecting just two years ago. ...

An unlicensed doctor allegedly at the centre of a medical scandal that has seen almost 300 residents of Battambang province’s Roka village infected with HIV proclaimed his innocence during the first day of his highly anticipated trial yesterday. After the judge read the charges to ...

Cambodia’s fight against malaria is at risk of being derailed because of a dispute over expenses payments between the Cambodian government and the Global Fund, the biggest donor to the country’s malaria programme. ...

The King and Queen Mother have awarded a royal residence in Koh Kong province to the director of the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospitals in a bid to relieve the financial burden on the facilities, which offer free treatment to all patients. ...

An unlicensed health worker charged in Cambodia with murder and other crimes after allegedly causing a mass HIV infection by treating patients with reused needles will be brought to trial next week, sources said. ...

Millions of dollars of aid money granted to Cambodia by the Global Fund to combat malaria have been left sitting in a bank account for more than a year, official documents seen by the Post show.The money remains untouched because the National Malaria Centre (CNM) ...

A set of new global standards for adolescent health care released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS this week indicate that a worldwide gap in health care provision for youths is magnified by Cambodia’s comparatively young population, officials and experts said yesterday. ...

Fires set by plantation owners in Indonesia may be to blame for the smog hanging over Phnom Penh, the Ministry of the Environment said yesterday. “I know there is a serious problem with haze,” Ministry spokesman Sao Sopheap told Khmer Times. “We have noticed haze ...

Hing Phon thought she was losing her mind when night after night terrifying nightmares jolted her awake as she dreamt of her husband, eldest son and 18 other relatives being killed by the Khmer Rouge during their brutal reign in Cambodia. ...

As Cambodia contends with one of the strongest El Niño cycles in recent memory, a new study of millions of dengue cases over the past two-decades-plus has shown that spikes in the deadly disease across Southeast Asia may be linked to the weather phenomenon.Upswings in ...

Tuberculosis (TB) is still a major health problem in Cambodia. Natalie Lorent, PhD student at the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) and the University of Antwerp (UA), conducted her research in the slums of Phnom Penh, where tuberculosis (TB) wreaks havoc. Lorent and her team ...

An unlicensed pharmacy in Siem Reap City that sold a traditional Chinese nutritional supplement the manufacturer claims can treat “100 diseases” was shut down on Wednesday after a 72-year-old man died after taking a dose, officials said Thursday. ...

A medical doctor accused of fraud by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court admitted at trial yesterday to swindling $10,000 and a car from his business partners as they were setting up a pharmacy earlier this year.​ ...