Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB), an infectious disease affecting the lungs and causing fever, hemoptysis, night sweats, and weight loss, has ravaged Southeast Asia for decades. According to the World Health Organization, the region contains one third of the world’s TB cases. TB has threatened Vietnam, where HIV ...

More than half of the foreigners who died at Malaysian immigration detention camps over the past two years are Myanmar citizens, according to a report by the Malaysian National Human Rights Commission Human Rights, Suhakam, the Malay acronym. The report said that of the 118 deaths in ...

Some tobacco producers who sell their products on the local market still refuse to place graphic images and health warnings on cigarette packaging despite a government decree on the matter coming into force several months ago. Mom Kong, the executive director of the Cambodia Movement ...

On the outskirts of Cambodia’s Battambang province, down a broken dirt road bleached white by the sun, Prum Ly is waiting within the walls of her hut to die. Outside in the afternoon heat, half-starved chickens scrabble in the dirt, stripped to the skin by ...

Cambodia’s war on drugs is in full swing, routinely grabbing headlines as ever-growing numbers of suspects – more than 4,000 so far, most of them users – swell the Kingdom’s jails. But behind the high-profile raids, the campaign is having an alarming, albeit hidden, side ...

The growing elderly population is putting pressure on the universal healthcare scheme, forcing officials to seek fresh funding. The National Health Security Office, which operates the scheme, has submitted a Bt164-billion budget request for the next fiscal year but ended up getting just Bt151 billion. “We ...

An increase in the number of resistant-TB cases has occurred in the southwestern region of Việt Nam, according to the head of the region’s national TB prevention and control office. At a conference on TB prevention held last week in Cần Thơ, Dr Nguyễn Thị ...

Head doctors at hospitals around Myanmar are calling for more resources to be dedicated to the fight against tuberculosis, as a current shortfall in medical officers has left patients waiting on treatment. The calls were made at an annual national evaluation meeting in Yangon on December ...

Vietnam is among countries where smoking is most widely prevalent, losing more than 100 people a day to the habit and facing a huge financial burden, according to official figures. Statistics from the Ministry of Health show that the Vietnamese smoking population is among the biggest ...

People smoking tobacco in offices, restaurants and other public spaces will have to indulge their habit in clearly demarcated smoking areas or both the smoker and establishment owner will face fines, Cambodia’s Ministry of Health announced. Following the government’s approval in March of a sub-decree banning ...