Priority health concerns

The Cambodian veterinary authorities have reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Battambang affecting backyard poultry. An immediate notification was sent to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reporting that the causal agent has been identified as the HPAI virus, serotype H5N1. ...

Siv Mao, 25, just had a caesarian operation. She feels some discomfort but is smiling. Her newborn baby is sleeping fitfully beside her and she says: “They saved our lives and I’m happy.” Ms. Mao encountered complications in her pregnancy and doctors knew she could not ...

A 9-year-old boy has become the 10th person this year to die of bird flu in Cambodia, the World Health Organization announced Monday. The U.N. agency said the boy from a village in northeastern Battambang province came down with fever and vomiting on July 26 and ...

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 ...

Cambodia’s health ministry today announced two more H5N1 avian flu cases, both in children, the hardest-hit group in that country so far. The patients are a 9-year-old boy from Battambang province and a 5-year-old girl from Kandal province, according to a joint statement today from Cambodia’s ...

For breakfast, it’s rice. For lunch, it’s rice again, and for dinner – rice. Sometimes, Cambodian Un Koy says, her mother will prepare some beans or carrots, and on very special days even fish or pork. Across Asia, rice is the most widely consumed staple. That’s ...

A 3-year-old boy from Prey Veng province’s Kompong Trabek district has contracted avian influenza, a deadly disease that has killed seven children and two men so far this year in the largest outbreak the country has seen, the Ministry of Health said in a statement ...

During a presentation at the 2013 International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Cambodia showed its new initiative called “Cambodia 3.0” which aims to eliminate new infections of HIV by 2020. Cambodia had one of the fastest growing HIV ...

A six-year-old Cambodian girl has died from bird flu, bringing the country’s toll from the deadly virus to nine so far this year, the World Health Organisation said Tuesday. The girl, from the southern province of Kampot, died in a children’s hospital in the capital Phnom ...

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 ...

The mortality rate for children under the age of 5 in Cambodia has fallen by 64 percent since 1990, with the most marked decrease noted over the past decade, according to a Unicef report released yesterday. The report, Committed to Survival: A promise Renewed, lists Cambodia ...

A Health Ministry official said yesterday the government was still hoping to recoup the last $20 million of a Global Fund grant for fighting malaria that the international charity has held back because of Cambodia’s poor use of fund dollars. Last week, a spokesman for the ...

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is withholding nearly $20 million originally granted to fight malaria in Cambodia because of the government’s poor use of past Fund dollars. The government blames its poor showing on the Fund’s time-consuming procurement procedures. The Fund awarded the ...

Leng Sopheap used to wake up before the crack of dawn and walk with crates of vegetables from her farm to the nearby market underneath a blanket so her neighbors wouldn’t know they were buying produce from someone infected with HIV/AIDS. Not long after her ...

Health officials and workers are concerned about budget shortages for the treatment of tuberculosis in the Kingdom as new data reveals that prevalence of the disease has declined 37 percent from 2002, officials said yesterday. Mao Tan Eang, director of the National Centre for Tuberculosis and ...

An 11-year-old HIV-positive girl evicted from Borei Keila moved back to Phnom Penh to live with her aunt because she had no access to medication at her relocation site in Kandal province, she said yesterday. During another day of protests outside the National Assembly, schoolgirl Theng ...

Officials said yesterday that the government had suspended a recruitment agency in Kompong Chhnang province suspected of forcibly confining 45 women and that plans were underway to shut it down permanently. Police rescued the women, including 26 girls under the age of 18, who were training ...

About 400 chickens suspected of being infected with bird flu were culled Friday in Banteay Meanchey province’s Monkol Borei district after a died of the virus less than two weeks ago, officials said. Meanwhile, last week the Agriculture Ministry reported that H5N1, or avian influenza, ...