Emergency medical care in Phnom Penh dramatically improved in July 2017 with the opening of the Sunrise Japan Hospital after nearly eight years of planning and construction.

The $35-million project opened in Chroy Changva commune across the Cambodia-Japan Friendship bridge, and fill critical gaps in emergency and trauma care, surgery and neurology in Cambodia.

Sunrise Japan Hospital CEO Toshiaki Fukada says the purpose of the new Japanese-run hospital is to provide the country with better medical care. “We strive for the community-rooted hospital which is not for the wealthy people but everyone,” he says.

Cambodia presently has one of the lowest doctor-patient ratios in the world, and while hospitals can provide decent medical care, the country is lacking in specialists. The new hospital will attempt to improve the medical landscape by employing well-trained foreign doctors and also improving the capacity of local medical staff.

“We hope this hospital will be the most trusted hospital for every Cambodian,” says Yoshifumi Hayashi (MD), the hospital’s Clinical & Management Director. “We will provide trusted medical service.”

As a joint initiative of the JGC Corporation, the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan and the Kitahara Hospital Group, the new hospital will bring the Kingdom its first world-class stroke treatment centre, with its own unit providing neurosurgery, neurology, interventional neuroradiology, and rehabilitation. It will also house an emergency centre with a dedicated trauma surgery unit, which is expected to be a game-changer in a country where traffic accidents are a leading cause of injury and death.  

Phnom Penh residents can also visit the hospital for more everyday treatments as it has a general medical centre, infectious disease unit and an internal medicine centre, with separate units for general surgery, gastroenterology and cardiology. Visitors can also stop by the health checkup centre for the annual shots and doctor’s visit.

The new facility will also provide training to local medical professionals, with the overall objective of raising the bar when it comes to the quality of service in the Cambodian medical industry.

“Now locals don’t trust Cambodian hospitals or Cambodian doctors. If our hospital is able to provide a quality service, then perhaps we can reverse that situation,” says Fukada. “We are creating a strong team of capable local medical professionals. We want them to stay with us for as long as possible, but eventually some of them will move on to establish clinics and hospitals of their own, bringing with them the good practices and standards that they learnt at Sunrise and spread them around the country.”