Cambodia is stepping up a ‘final mile’ push to wipe out malaria.
Cambodian scientist Yeang Chheang has spent six a long time preventing malaria—even within the Khmer Rouge labor camp the place his spouse and child died—and stands tantalizingly near fulfilling his life’s work.
The dominion is stepping up a “last mile” push to wipe out the mosquito-borne illness, specializing in hard-to-reach communities in distant, forested or mountainous areas.
From 170,000 instances and 865 deaths from malaria in 1997, solely 355 instances had been recorded final 12 months—and never a single fatality has been reported since 2018.
The hope is for zero instances this 12 months—a outstanding turnaround for a rustic that was previously an epicenter of multi-drug resistant strains. And the landmark can be unthinkable with out the work of Yeang Chheang, who rebuilt the malaria management program after the autumn of the Khmer Rouge.
The communist regime murdered, starved or labored to loss of life round two million individuals throughout its 1975-79 rule—together with Yeang Chheang’s three brothers, sister, mom, spouse and son.
Aged 17, he started coaching as Cambodia’s first medical entomologist with a French professional in 1954.
He helped with the primary malaria elimination pilot challenge, establishing a lab below a leaf-roofed workplace, catching mosquitoes and larvae for experiments when he was deployed to a malaria hotspot within the northeast within the Sixties.
“When we started the work, it was so difficult because we lacked people with good knowledge,” the 87-year-old instructed AFP from his house in Phnom Penh.
Cambodia was as soon as an epicenter of multi-drug resistant malaria.
Starved to loss of life
When the Khmer Rouge took energy, Yeang Chheang and his household had been despatched from Phnom Penh to a labor camp the place his spouse and child son starved to loss of life.
Regardless of fearing for his life, he continued treating malaria sufferers, secretly handing out drugs he had picked up from piles of medication dumped within the streets when he left Phnom Penh.
That might have seen him killed for violating Khmer Rouge guidelines.
However the cadres spared him after a prime commander fell sick with malaria.
“Because of my medicines, I could survive and did not have to work hard carrying soil or digging canals,” Yeang Chheang mentioned.
“The tablets saved our lives,” he added, referring to himself and his three different sons.
After the Khmer Rouge was ousted in 1979, he joined with a handful of others to revive the nationwide malaria management program.
There have been a number of outbreaks in subsequent years, and he led his staff on foot by villages riddled with landmines within the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin, a hotpsot for drug-resistant malaria.
Yeang Chheang obtained the ‘Unsung Hero’ on the United Nations Local weather Change Convention for his work combating malaria.
‘Final inch’
Malaria, attributable to parasites transmitted through mosquitoes, was for many years a significant reason for sickness and loss of life in Cambodia.
The federal government launched a nationwide motion plan in 2011, aiming to eradicate all instances within the nation by 2025.
Inside three years the dominion stopped drug-resistant malaria, and in 2020 launched the so-called “last mile” efforts.
Almost two-thirds of final 12 months’s reported instances had been within the distant northeast, the place native volunteers have signed as much as assist.
Nhoun Niyok, 37, joined the marketing campaign a decade in the past in Pu Kesh village in Mondulkiri province.
He carries out speedy exams, administers medicines and advises individuals on utilizing insecticide-treated mosquito nets to guard themselves.
“I am so happy I could help my community and I think villagers won’t be sick with malaria again,” he mentioned.
Yeang Chheang rebuilt Cambodia’s malaria management program after the autumn of the Khmer Rouge.
He final recorded a malaria case in his village in September.
“Perhaps, the dream will come true,” he mentioned. “It looks like malaria will be gone soon.”
If there aren’t any malaria instances this 12 months, Cambodia would want to maintain zero indigenous infections for one more three consecutive years from 2026 to be licensed as malaria-free by the World Well being Group (WHO).
Success would make it solely the second nation in continental Asia to attain the feat, after China.
“This year, we are entering the last inch, not last mile anymore,” Huy Rekol, director of the Nationwide Middle for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Management, instructed AFP.
Marianna Trias, the WHO consultant to Cambodia, added that certification would set “a powerful example for other countries, inspiring them to pursue the same goal”.
Consultants warn local weather change and cross-border transmission involving migrants and cellular populations may but derail Cambodia’s efforts.
The hope is for zero malaria instances this 12 months.
And a few of its initiatives had been funded by the US Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID), with no readability but on whether or not they are going to be impacted by the Trump administration’s assist freeze.
There have been an estimated 263 million malaria instances worldwide in 2023—up 11 million on the earlier 12 months—and 597,000 deaths, in keeping with the WHO.
Regardless of Cambodia’s success, Yeang Chheang considers world elimination of the illness “absolutely impossible” on account of human migration.
“It will be around,” he mentioned. “I believe it won’t be totally eliminated.”
© 2025 AFP
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