Prime Minister Samdech Moha Borvor Thipadei Hun Manet has proposed to expand and upgrade provincial referral hospitals and community-based health centres to provide quality healthcare services, especially to critically ill patients. The expansion and improvement plan include up-to-date medical equipment, professional medical practitioners, and 24/7 health services, Samdech Thipadei Techo Hun Manet said at the inauguration ceremony of the US$10 million-worth Techo Sen Koh Thom Hospital in Kandal province on Mar. 13. 'We need to implement decentralisation, increasing possibility of equipping [the hospitals] with modern medical equipment at grassroots level as much as possible,' the Prime Minister said. This would start with the expansion of major health services from regional hospitals to provincial referral hospitals, and to community-based health centres, he underlined. Samdech Thipadei asked the medical practitioners to enhance the quality of care and expedite treatment processes without delay. Latest data by 2019 showed that Cambodia has 126 national and referral hospitals (including 9 national hospitals, 25 provincial referral hospitals and 92 district referral hospitals), 1,221 health centres, and 127 health posts, with a total of 13,464 hospital beds. Health centres are established in order to deliver the minimum basic health care services to the population in the community while national and provincial referral hospitals provide health services that cannot be delivered by health centres. Source: Agence Kampuchea Presse