Cambodia

Basic Health Services Project

This project started in 1999, funded by the Asian Development Bank, is located in Cambodia's Kampong Cham Province and works with the Cambodian Government to provide basic health care services in the districts of Memut and Cheung Prey.

Local people, particularly women and children, can now access quality early treatment and preliminary services, as well as health education through health centres and referral hospitals, where previously they could not.

No small affair, this project pilots two models for health service provision in Cambodia allowing a comparison of two management styles: contracting out in Memut, where we recruit, manage and train all district health staff and contracting in in Cheung Prey, where we train and manage the district health staff already employed by Cambodia's Department of Health.

The project provides:

health services including immunisation, public health education, birth spacing services and antenatal care visits
mobile health education teams able to reach remote villages
staff development opportunities, such as training for midwives and other health staff, including malaria awareness, birth spacing methods and counselling skills as well as management training for health administration staff

An example of the Memut project's success is the wide level of community participation, which has so far led to an overall increase in the number of patients seeking care, increased numbers of pregnant women receiving iron supplementation (currently 99 percent) and the fact that all children in our area now receive Vitamin A supplementation and have access to measles immunisation.

Of all the districts within Kampong Cham Province, Memut is now considered to provide the best health services.