Cambodia

Cambodia has joined the small number of countries that have successfully reduced the trend of increasing HIV prevalence through condom promotion and public education programs. The next priority for the Country will be to add secondary prevention efforts to these successful primary prevention programs, through education and care of those already infected with the virus. These proposed research and training programs are designed to increase capacity to provide care for people living with HIV, while adapting knowledge from developed and other developing countries to the local environment.

The impact of the recent civil war in Cambodia was the selective destruction of public health infrastructure and human resources. In response to this crisis, the CDC has summarized the country’s needs in consultation with government agencies. In the CDC’s Cambodia Country Assessment, priority areas included strengthening laboratory capacity, promotion of blood safety, counseling and testing, preventing vertical transmission, sexually transmitted infections, TB co-infection, clinical care, training for epidemiology and program evaluation and monitoring, behavioral change, and stigma reduction.

Out of the population of almost 12 million, Cambodia now has 170,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, while an estimated 20,000 people have already died of AIDS. Present epidemiological data suggest that although there is a slowing of the spread of the HIV epidemic in the country, the number of advanced AIDS cases is expected to grow quickly over the next five years.

The estimated HIV prevalence among adults aged 15-49 was 2.6% in 2002, Cambodia is the most severely affected country in the Asian region.

Joseph Harwell, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine has received NIH funding via the K12 mechanism for his study entitled “A Longitudinal Study of the Clinical Manifestations of HIV-1 Infection in Cambodian Women”. Also, funds have been awarded by the World AIDS Foundation to Susan Cu-Uvin, M.D., and Dr. Harwell to establish a Women’s HIV Clinic in Phnom Penh Cambodia at the Sihanouk Hospital Center of HOPE. Collaborations with Sihanouk Hospital Center of HOPE have produced publications in the International Journal of STD & AIDS on such topics as opportunistic infections and meningitis in hospitalized patients in Phnom Penh, and HIV prevalence among parturient women in Sihanoukville.