HIV/AIDS and Alcohol Risks in Cambodia: Confronting Challenges and Policymaking through Research-Guided Actions

The Khmer Rouge period (1975-1978) saw up to 25 percent of Cambodians die in "the killing fields" or Ii'om starvation, Devastation to national ini1-astructures, family and social life, culture, and the elimination of educated professionals including doctors and teachers werc not alleviated when the Vietnamese then occupied Cambodia for the next 11 years, The Paris Peace Accords in 2001 defined the rebuilding of the Cambodian state and the United Nations moved international personnel to Cambodia to separate warring factions and prepare for elections in 1993, UNAMIC (United Nations Advance Mission in Cambodia, 1991-1992) brought 1,100 personnel and was replaced by UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia, 1992-1993) with over 22,000 foreign soldiers, police, and so on, including contingents from sub-Saharan Affican nations already in the throes of their own HIV/AIDS pandemics (UNAMIC, 1992; UNTAC,1996;Yeager & Kingma, 2005)