Public health

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 Health Ministry has warned all Cambodians to drink lots of water and keep cool, as hot season temperatures near 40 0C. The ministry’s Communicable Disease Control department also advised the public to avoid alcohol and drink only boiled or filtered water to prevent food poisoning ...

Laillou was stunned to find that 90 percent of coarse salt and 40-50 percent of fine salt was now not iodized. And all of it was labeled as iodized. Online journal Nutrients said iodine deficiency in Cambodia had become “a serious public health problem” just ...

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.   ...

The Swiss government has vowed to help secure long-term financial sustainability for the Kantha Bopha children’s hospitals. Last week Beat Richner, the founder and head of the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital and a Health Ministry adviser, resigned from his position as managing director due to health ...

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. ...

Beat Richner, the founder and head of the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital and a Health Ministry adviser, is seriously ill and has resigned from his position as managing director. ...

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. ...

The Commerce Ministry has banned imports of several food products over a health scare and warned the public to avoid them. The Camcontrol directorate-general took action over I.M. Healthy SoyNut Butter and I.M. Healthy Granola products after the US Food and Drug Administration linked them to ...

The Ministry of Health acknowledged yesterday in its annual report that the quality of health care services in the Kingdom remains poor, with experts concluding that the slow improvement is due to a lack of government commitment.   ...

Officials broke ground on Saturday on a new mental health center in Kandal province that will house detainees from the notorious Prey Speu detention center in Phnom Penh, among others, government and city officials said on Sunday. ...

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.   ...

Cambodia and China inked a deal yesterday to build a new communicable disease control facility in the Kingdom for the country to expand its capacity to detect and respond to communicable disease outbreaks, such as Zika and Ebola, in a timely fashion. ...

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. ...

The Health Ministry’s Communicable Disease Control (CDC) department has urged people to be cautious of the spread of hand, food and mouth disease (HFMD) and asked that infants or children displaying symptoms be brought to seek medical treatment immediately. “Especially for children with dangerous symptoms, ...

Authorities are preparing a draft law to make surrogacy legal with a range of protections for the women and babies involved. News of the move emerged yesterday after a meeting between Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn and newly appointed United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative to Cambodia ...

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. ...