In Cambodia, just over one hundred kilometres up the Mekong River north-east of the capital Phnom Penh, lies a provincial town called Kampong Cham. Here, a small Médecins Sans Frontières team are working hard to improve comprehensive tuberculosis (TB) care in the provincial hospital and fill gaps in a national system that is struggling to adequately manage the region's high TB burden.

Médecins Sans Frontières built a TB ward for Kampong Cham Provincial Hospital in 2009, and upgraded the laboratory facilities. Since then Médecins Sans Frontières has been providing staff, training, medicines and material support to the hospital to improve its ability to diagnose and treat TB patients effectively. The last quarter of 2010 saw big improvements, with a 25% higher TB detection rate achieved. Currently the team in Kampong Cham is seeing about 120 patients each week with roughly one third of those being new suspected TB cases.

With the World Health Organization (WHO) estimating that 64% of all Cambodians are carrying the tuberculosis mycobacterium, and with an active TB prevalence of 0.69%, it ranks in the top 22 countries globally for TB infection. Tuberculosis is an opportunistic infection, which means that it takes advantage of weakened immune systems, and it is commonly spread through the air by an infected person coughing. In Cambodia, weakened immune systems are all too common due to malnutrition, HIV infection, age, or poor hygiene and living conditions... read more.