CCF, Chronic Care Facility (AIDS Hospice)
HIV causes incalculable human suffering, and in Cambodia’s case it could have the effect of undoing years of progress and development after years of devastating civil war. HIV can deliver a crippling effect on a family – the economics and structure of the family. In Cambodia, if a husband dies of AIDS, oftentimes the wife will spend all of the family money simply to exist; she will need to sell the family’s land, animals, and property simply for the family to survive and eat.
HOPE worldwide’s CCF, Chronic Care Facility, is a hospice center, housed in a separate facility from SHCH, dedicated solely to the critical nursing care of HIV/AIDS patients who are too acutely ill to be cared for at their homes.
Housed in a villa 2 km northwest of SHCH in Phnom Penh, CCF has 26 beds for its patients and 24-hour staffing of nurses and doctors. CCF patients come to CCF after being diagnosed with HIV at Sihanouk Hospital Center of HOPE; some patients stay only one week at CCF and are well enough to return to their homes, while others stay for several months until they are either strong enough to return home or until they die.
CCF is unique in that it has an on-site counselor who counsels on a day-to-day basis for the patients, as well as offers long-term family and community counseling for the patients' families. Currently, there are very few trained counselors in Cambodia, yet the need for emotional support and HIV community education is vast in Cambodia due to the high rate of HIV and limited availability to education about AIDS in Cambodia. 
Counseling HIV patients is crucial since lives are critically changed when a spouse or parent is diagnosed with HIV. Also, quality HIV education and counseling for relatives lessens stigmatization and discrimination in communities.
Estimates are that the HIV rate was as high as 3% of the Cambodian society just ten years ago, and today it has fallen to 0.9%. While HIV levels have fallen, tolerance for those infected with HIV has grown in Cambodia. Previously, Cambodians would not go to the hospital if they suspected they had HIV for fear of discrimination; today, most Cambodians see a doctor earlier in the disease - which will save an estimated 6-8 years on their life simply for going to the doctor earlier in the disease to receive treatment and accessing life-saving ART drugs.
When CCF's mental health counselor, Bunthy Phuon, was asked about the effect of AIDS on Cambodia, he said,
“In my experience, AIDS impoverishes Cambodia more. It breaks families apart, creates hardships for the family, and affects the family a lot – the whole family feels the effect. There is an economic and educational effect. If the mother is admitted to the hospital with HIV, there is no one to care for the children and to look after their education. Oftentimes, the children are no longer educated as a result of the illness. Without education for our children and with the death of so many young adults, this kills off the human resources of the future of Cambodia.”
CCF's counselor, Bunthy Phuon, has spent nearly a decade on HIV/AIDS community education and counseling in and around Phnom Penh. He has been a leader in Cambodia at breaking down stigmas associated with AIDS through community education programs and one-on-one counseling.
Below get to know Bunthy and a fellow CCF nurse, Manny In, who survived the brutal genocide of the Pol Pot regime to spend her life serving her countrymen and woman as a nurse and a nurse educator. Also below are the stories of patients at CCF, who speak about the hardship of HIV/AIDS on themselves and on their families and about the resources that CCF has provided them.
Bunthy Phuon
Bunthy Phuon has served as an HIV/AIDS counselor and social worker at CCF for the past year, working to educate patients and families about misconceptions about the disease and to break down stigmas that the patients may feel or be faced with. Prior to coming on board as a counselor at CCF, Bunthy worked as a community AIDS educator in Phnom Penh with HOPE worldwide’s homecare team for eight years. In this role, Bunthy led a staff of five who collaborated with local public health officials to organize town hall meetings to educate local districts in Phnom Penh about HIV/AIDS.
Manny In
Manny In, a veteran nurse for SHCH and CCF has worked with the Center of HOPE since 1997. She was inspired to become a nurse after the hardships she and her family faced during the Pol Pot regime.
Manny said,
“After Pol Pot, I thought it was good luck that I was still alive. Here my neighbors and family had died from disease and starvation those four years. During those years, there were no drugs and medical facilities. It was like living in the 10th century. We had only one hospital for the entire region. For malaria, they were prescribing people tree bark rather than pharmaceutical products. After I saw many people die so needlessly, I wanted to learn about diseases and what caused diseases; so I decided to become a nurse.”
Boran Long
Boran Long is CCF’s longest admitted patient, entering CCF in 2005, and the only CCF patient currently voluntarily working for CCF. Boran has served as CCF’s gardener for the past year. Daily, Boran spends up to four hours tending, hoeing and watering CCF’s garden. He pulls out many weeds in his efforts to beautify the garden for the use of the CCF patients and staff. During the dry season, the garden requires a lot of work from Boran. He must water the garden frequently, pick up the dead leaves that abound, and pick up any trash in the garden vicinities.
Dany Ou
Globally more than half of all people living with AIDS are women. In Cambodia, 46% of HIV infections are women. Dany Ou, a 37 year old mother of three kids from Northwestern Cambodia, is one of those women.
Dany contracted AIDS from her husband, who died in 2002 from the disease. When he died she did not know that he had died of AIDS. She assumed he had died of tuberculosis, but she never suspected that AIDS was his killer. In the spring of 2007, Dany was suffering from severe weight loss, abdominal pain, and headaches. She journeyed for nearly ten hours from her home near the Thai border to seek emergency medical treatment in Phnom Penh at SHCH. It was at SHCH that Dany discovered she had AIDS.