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Cambodia seriously confronted with HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1997 which resulted in 3% of the total adult population living with HIV/AIDS. However, Cambodia is one of the few countries in the world that are on track to meet the Millennium Goal for HIV/AIDS.
According to the National AIDS Centre for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology and STD (NCHADS), the prevalence rate in Cambodia has been on a steady decline since 1998, and recently at 0.9%. Also, HIV infection among most-at-risk people has been consistently decreasing. Anyhow, there are estimated 67,200 people over the age of 15 living with HIV/AIDS and no one knows quite well how many children have been orphaned as a result of the disease.
Meanwhile, there has been a significant behavior change and increase in access to treatment and care. Cambodia is also one of few countries that have been able to reach the 3 by 5 target of having at least 50% of people who need ARV treatment and receive ART treatment. According to NCHADS, number of patients receiving ART as of last quarter of 2008 was 31, 999 (adult: 28,932 and children: 3,067).
Apart from that, the number of VCCT services in Cambodia has also increased drastically over the last 7 years, from 12 sites in 2000 to 212 sites by the end of September 2008. While, of the 77,971 VCCT clients and TB patients tested at VCCT sites nationwide, 2,897 (37%) were detected HIV positive at VCCT sites.
Moreover, the number of PLHIV support groups has raised from 24 in 2002 to 919 in September 2008. A long with this, the number of active PLHIV supported by these groups increased from 4,000 in 2002 to 38,378 by September 2008. And, the number of home-based care (HBC) teams providing services to people living with HIV/AIDS has been scaled up from 52 teams in 2001 to 320 teams in 2008. A total of 678 (85%) of health centres are linked to HBC teams within the CoC program. These HBC teams are supporting a total of 27,944 PLHIV in 2008.
Support services for PLHIV and their families, AIDS orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) have increased in Cambodia. This is largely due to the efforts of NGOs and the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation (MoSVY). Many NGOs provide support in severely affected villages.
On the other hand, the key HIV care targets in the MoH’s Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS and STI Prevention and Care for 2004-07 are the expansion of the Continuum of Care program to all (76) Operational Districts (ODs) by end of 2007. Due to the relatively small size of Cambodia and the fact that the health system is still in the process of being established in some ODs, ARV-delivery services will be targeted in 36 key ODs with high HIV care needs, adequate capacity and appropriate geographical location.
2008 witnessed rapid progress in a number of key areas of the national response, in particular, commendable efforts to increase coverage of testing and the provision of prophylaxis for the prevention of mother to child transmission. There are 66 ODs which have PMTCT services available, therefore this service cover 86% of all ODs. There are 342,756 pregnant women in Cambodia in 2008 in which 103,768 (30.8%) pregnant women access to HIV testing and received test results. With the 0.84% HIV prevalence among pregnant women, there are totally 2,879 pregnant women infected with HIV. Among them 777 (27%) of them received ART as reported by NCHADS. Since April 2008, NCHADS implementing the Linked Response Demonstration Project in 4 ODs of Prey Veng in the respective RH of Neak Loeung, Kampong Trabek, Preah Sdach and Mesang and in Kirivong OD of Takeo. Lesson learnt from the Linked Response have shown the increase of access to comprehensive PMTCT service, access to information on the advantages of HIV testing and increase the knowledge of the community as well as coordination between all services for follow up linkages.
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