Cambodia
With a population over 17.000000 Cambodia had an estimated 76000 people living with HIV (PLHIV) in 2022. This number has fallen from a peak of 83000 PLHIV in 2010. This remarkable decline is mainly due to the decline of newly infected children from 0 to 14 years old. In 2010 there were nearly 6000 children infected in this age group by 2022 that number had dropped to 2000.
In Cambodia in 2022 there were1400 new HIV infections. Around1000 new infections were diagnosed in men (most MSM) around 500 in women. More good news: the number ofAIDS related deaths since 2010 has dropped by 30%.
But the UN target of 90-90-90 has not been reached yet. In 2022 86% of people living with HIV knew their status 86% of them were treated with HIV medication which suppressed the virus for 84% of them. One of the reasons that the target numbers have not been reached is the fact that nearly 18% of Cambodian sex-workers a large key population group avoid healthcare because of stigma and discrimination.
(Source: UNAIDS 2023)
Mother and Son
In a cozy neighborhood of Phnom Penh’s inner city we’re meeting 20-year-old Seyha and his mother, Choun Sokha. Seyha was infected with HIV at birth from his mother.
Until 2005, mother-to-child transmission was a major cause of the rapid spread of the AIDS epidemic in many African countries. Nowadays we know that if the infected pregnant mother gets the right medication, the chance of transmission to her baby is reduced to almost zero. Everywhere today that this knowledge is brought into practice leads to spectacular success. Treated mothers bear healthy babies.
Historically, drug users and sex workers in Cambodia are the groups most infected with HIV. But Seyha and his mother show that in this century HIV can also afflict the ordinary Cambodian family where drugs and prostitution play no role. In our film Seyha and his mother tell how that came about and what its consequences have been.
