Non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, stroke, and many other diseases are becoming more common in Cambodia, requiring increased public education to increase awareness and reduce the incidence of these diseases.
The COVID-19 update task force should focus on educating the public about this non-communicable disease as widely as possible because it is posing a serious health risk to the Cambodian people.
Cases of COVID-19 infection in Cambodia have been quiet for a long time, but the Ministry of Health continues to issue daily updates on the disease, showing the same figures. Should the Ministry of Health continue to update this disease and issue more and more announcements? The disease is still spreading around the world, but the public, both in the international community and in Cambodia, is no longer paying attention to it.
Globally, the need for daily updates on the spread of COVID-19 has generally decreased compared to the early stages of the pandemic, especially as vaccines and treatments have become more available and public health conditions have stabilized.
Regarding what the ministry is doing, some circles have suggested that the Ministry of Health should stop issuing the announcement because public opinion in the country is no longer interested. When they lose interest like this, it will make the effort to do the job less sexy, so it is equivalent to the loss that the ministry has to spend the team to continue updating the case.
The opinion suggested that the ministry should redirect this team to do other important and beneficial tasks for various public health issues, especially non-communicable diseases that are gaining attention and are showing a worrying increase in the country.
This is a one-sided view, but don’t forget that at this time, although this disease is no longer a global pandemic, the World Health Organization is still monitoring and updating it. Just like extending daily attention to weekly levels. The disease is still spreading, but its level of danger has decreased, and in the world, according to observations, in the past 7 days, there have been only 790 cases, although it has infected more than 777 million people and killed more than 7 million people in the world.
In Cambodia, according to the ministry’s announcement, there seem to be no new infections and no deaths have been reported for a long time. As of January 21, 2025, this disease has only affected nearly 140,000 people in Cambodia, with only 3,056 deaths. Based on global and domestic evidence, the Ministry of Health should continue to monitor the development of the COVID-19 virus, but the number of working groups can be reduced by redirecting the work of experts to strengthen monitoring of what is important and necessary, such as dangerous cases of non-communicable diseases and trends in the spread of new and unique viruses.
For some time now, the ministry has shown much better response and response, and if the response is faster and more comprehensive, and the scope of monitoring and surveillance is further expanded, the better. For COVID-19 cases, the weekly update can be continued, and if there is nothing new, then monthly because there is no major change, except when there is a new development that needs to be notified and announced.
In summary, the work of monitoring and updating COVID-19 should continue, but with a reduced number of experts and rotating the team to monitor what is new and dangerous at the moment, including the current situation of concern in the country regarding non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, Stroke, cancer, etc.
The team should also pay attention to monitoring and explaining to citizens about seasonal diseases so that citizens have understanding and can prevent and protect themselves from these diseases. Doing so is better because this information can be useful and allow citizens to reduce their health costs.
