The
number of new HIV infections in Cambodia nearly doubled over the past
decade—the greatest increase in Asia—while less than a third of Cambodians
living with the virus are receiving medication to slow its development,
according to a report released this week.
The
study, carried out by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health
Metrics and Evaluation, states that the number of new HIV cases in Cambodia
grew by an average of 6.6 percent annually between 2005 and 2015, even as rates
declined in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia.
The
number of people living with HIV in Cambodia, meanwhile, grew from 54,880 to
82,970 over the same period, while the number of people who died from AIDS rose
from 1,810 to 2,600, according to the report.
Of those
living with HIV, only 30 percent are receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART),
which is vital to slowing the development of the virus, according to a
statement released with the report.
“The
transmission rates of HIV in Cambodia [are] still high. The country should
focus more on stronger preventive efforts and universal access of ART
treatment, and curbing the transmission among injecting drug users,” Soewarta
Kosen, a policy researcher at Indonesia’s National Institute of Health Research
and Development, who worked on the study, said in the statement.
Nuon
Sidara, a project coordinator at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said
that while the government had been successful in stemming an HIV epidemic in the
1990s, it needed to do more to halt the current rise in infections.
“Sadly,
we are now seeing that funding for HIV/AIDS programs is drying up in Cambodia,
and I fear that this is part of the reason we are seeing HIV/AIDS infection
rates increasing so much,” he said.
“While
prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS should be passed gradually on to the
government, we continue to see an enormous over-reliance on civil society,
which is struggling to meet demand.”
George
Wright
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