Cambodia's success in tackling HIV/AIDS threatened: study

Mao Samnag, 28, former prostitute and HIV positive, sits down on her shelter in a shanty town in Phnom Penh

Cambodian woman Thach Samnang, who is HIV positive, sews a bag at her home at a slum village in Phnom Penh

Tuesday, December 21, 2010
AFP

PHNOM PENH — Cambodia's widely hailed efforts in tackling HIV/AIDS are under threat with foreign donors likely to cut funding over the next two decades, a study said Tuesday.

"The success that Cambodia has had with its AIDS programme is at risk because of the possibility that external partners will withdraw financial support too quickly," said Richard Skolnik of the Results for Development Institute (R4D).

The Cambodian government will have to spend more of its own money in the fight against the virus, study coordinator Skolnik added.

New HIV infections have dropped from around 15,500 annually in the early 1990s to about 2,100 in 2009. And around 93 percent of 33,500 AIDS patients who are eligible are receiving anti-retroviral treatment.

External partners fund 90 percent of the country's AIDS programme, which currently costs just over 50 million dollars a year.

But as a result of the global financial crisis and a shift in donor priorities, those funds are likely to shrink in the coming years and Cambodia "will need to significantly increase its own allocation", the report states.

The study, "The Long-Run Costs and Financing of HIV/AIDS in Cambodia", was compiled by a team of government officials with assistance from UNAIDS and US-based R4D, which specialises in health policy analysis.

The authors compared several financing scenarios from now until 2031, four decades after HIV/AIDS was first detected in Cambodia.

Each option has a different price tag and a different rate of success in preventing new infections, and all assume the government and external donors will eventually split the costs evenly.

The most cost-effective approach recommended by the authors involves focusing prevention efforts on high-risk groups such as sex workers, men who have sex with men and injecting drug users.

This could see the annual number of new HIV infections fall to just below 1,400 by 2031 while "the total cost can be kept down to 68 million dollars a year," Skolnik told AFP.

The report will be presented to the Cambodian parliament Tuesday.

"Cambodia has a long history of fighting HIV/AIDS head-on, with effective prevention strategies, and we believe that this report will help us sharpen our strategies," said Cambodian Health Minister Mam Bunheng.

The study is part of the aids2031 project, a global initiative taking a long-term look at the virus.

Cambodia HIV and Aids treatment programmes threatened

Cambodia has cut its rate of new HIV infections, but must reduce its reliance on foreign funding

21 December 2010
By Guy De Launey
BBC News, Phnom Penh

Health workers have warned that Cambodia's success in reducing its rate of HIV and Aids may be at risk.

The US-based Results for Development Institute says that prevention and treatment programmes are too reliant on overseas donors.

If that money stopped coming through, infections and deaths might rise.

Cambodia used to be the HIV blackspot of Southeast Asia - in the late 1990s there were 15,000 new infections every year.

But in recent years, Cambodia has been the star performer, where the rate of new infections has fallen to around 2,000.

The country is also renowned for its treatment programmes for HIV-positive people.

More than nine out of 10 patients eligible for anti-retroviral drugs are getting the medicine.

But there may yet be unwelcome twists in both those success stories.

Difficulties

Anti-human trafficking laws have resulted in the closure of many brothels.

That has made it more difficult to reach sex workers to encourage the use of condoms.

And the drug treatment programmes are almost totally funded by foreign donors.

Robert Hecht of the Results for Development Institute says that is an unhealthy position.

"Foreign aid is quite uncertain, hard to predict.

"Cambodia is in a position to manage the costs of its Aids programme because it has been successful in reducing new infections.

"It has a good opportunity to expand its share of the total funding pot and in that way reduce its dependence on the outside sources of financing," he said.

Mr Hecht says that gradually reducing donations would allow Cambodia to take more control of its HIV/Aids programmes.

The government has welcomed the report.

It says it will help to "sharpen its strategies".

Standard and Poor's assesses Cambodian economic outlook as stable

Oct 9, 2008
DPA

Phnom Penh - Standard and Poor's declared the Cambodian economic outlook stable Thursday in an overall positive assessment in a sovereign report covering 21 Asia-Pacific nations.

The report, sub-titled As the Financial Storm Spreads, Major Uncertainties Loom, praised the government's economic strategies.

It noted that despite the fact corruption and a dependence on donors remained concerns, it considered the Cambodian People's Party national election win in July with an increased majority meant 'no change in its pragmatic and market-friendly direction was expected.'

However, the strong showing of the main opposition party, the Sam Rainsy Party, at the polls, grabbing 22 per cent of the vote, meant despite its dominance the ruling party remained accountable to voters and augured well for the democratic process, it added.

The global financial services and credit rating company awarded Cambodia its first sovereign debt rating of B-plus in 2007.

The B-plus rating is below investment grade status, restricting many institutional investors. However, Cambodia has since risen above nations such as Pakistan.

Standard and Poor's Thursday assessed Cambodia's outlook stable and said although 'inflationary pressures remain acute ... fiscal policy remains one of the credit strengths for Cambodia.'

Cambodia is expected to maintain real GDP growth of around 7 per cent into next year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The report comes ahead of an IMF meeting in Washington October 10-13 which will gather the world's central bankers and finance ministers to discuss a global response to the world's financial crisis.