Khmer News: Assistance for Disadvantaged Communities

October 2nd, 2011
By Cristina Cusoveanu
HealBlog.net

Thanks to a study conducted by Bart Jacobs in Cambodia and several other countries with a weak economy, poor people have better access to health care. He encouraged the development of better strategies of providing the disadvantaged with appropriate assistance, such as health insurances and health equity funds. The main problem is that they often do not have access to common health care supplies.

Although life expectancy has increased significantly in the past decades, poor countries are still affected by high mortality rates, where more than 90% of annual children deaths take place. Jacobs suggested new approaches so that the poor could at least benefit from basic assistance. In Cambodia, local monks beg so that they can pay physicians to take care of the poor – this is called the Pagoda system.

Also, many poor people do not go to hospitals because they are unaware that they can receive free support, but local communities are required to classify their members and offer free assistance to the disadvantaged. The introduction of user fees also proved effective, as more people came looking for help, assuming that thus they will be better taken care of. However, most of them were richer members of the community.

Now Cambodia has started identifying its poor members and the Pagoda system is available to almost 300,000 poor people.