Diagnostic Microbiology in Post-Genocide Cambodia

The microbiology laboratory that Nhem Somary supervises in the Kampong Cham Provincial Hospital along the Mekong River, three hours northeast of Phnom Penh, serves as a model for labs in other Cambodian hospitals. She began supervising the laboratory in 1998, but did not offer diagnostic microbiology laboratory services until 2009 when the Diagnostic Microbiology Development Program established a microbiology laboratory there. Early that year, she used her only bottle of TCBS agar to isolate more than 60 strains of Vibrio cholerae during an outbreak of “acute watery diarrhea.” Somary gave physicians at the Kampong Cham Hospital an accurate diagnosis.