HEALTH SITUATION
Cambodia has observed a significant improvement in health status of the population due to the
strong economic growth in the past several years; particularly in infant, child and maternal
mortality as well as in continuing decline in HIV prevalence and deaths by malaria. However the
improvement in neonatal mortality has been much slower, and the issues of inequity still persists
between rural and urban areas as well as among different socio-economic groups including
women, the poor, migrant workers, unregistered population, and ethnic minorities. Substantial
progress has been made towards meeting the targets set out in the Cambodia MDGs (CMDGs)
where all the CMDG 4, 5, 6 efforts are on track to meet these goals by 2015. Progress to improve
nutrition has been much slower than expected, with under-nutrition contributing to more than
6,400 child deaths annually and 40% of children under 5 are stunting. New health challenges are
also emerging, notably Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) epidemic and growing rates of injuries
such as road accidents. Among others, tobacco is considered to be one of the biggest risk factors
for developing NCDs, whereas around 30% of adults is estimated to be daily tobacco users. While
Cambodia has made a strong progress in communicable diseases control, one of the remaining
challenges is emerging infectious diseases where Cambodia has the highest numbers of cases of
avian influenza H5N1 subtype (47 cases between 2005- 2013) globally. Cambodia is committed to
developing the core capacities required by the International Health Regulations (IHR) by June
2014. Good progress has been made in surveillance and response to outbreaks, however
development of ‘point of entry’ policies has lagged behind.