OMF Cambodia seconds some members to other organisations, in accordance with its normal practice of doing this rather than establishing its own projects. Members seconded in this way continue to be a full member of the OMF Team. Currently one of the doctors is being seconded part-time to Prison Fellowship Cambodia as their medical advisor, providing medical care to prisoners in the police hospital, in some of the prisons and also to ex-prisoners. The health care system in the prisons is ridden with corruption, inadequate medical supplies and inadequately trained medical personnel.

Treatment for TB is available...

Free TB treatment has been available in Cambodia for many years. But treatment wasn’t available for prisoners in places like Phnom Penh’s Monivong Hospital until 2004, when Prison Fellowship Cambodia (PFC) began to bring hope to its patients.

Staff from PFC’s Blue Gate House collect sputum from the prisoners for diagnosis and send it to CENAT (the TB centre). PFC doctors are then able to take medication into the prison hospital for those who have TB, giving it to them daily to ensure compliance.

...but for HIV/AIDS?

However, without anti-retroviral therapy (ART), the prisoners who are afflicted with HIV/AIDS as well as TB don’t respond very well if they only have TB medication and will often succumb to opportunistic infections or the TB itself.

Recently, Medicine Sans Frontiers have been able to provide the much needed ART in some of the prisons, giving prisoners with HIV/AIDS and TB some hope. Without these medications many would have died.