By Mao Pengfei

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 19 -- The 15th medical expert team of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) to Cambodia was awarded the "Peace Knight Medals" and certificates of honor by the Cambodian Defense Ministry at the PreahKetMealea Hospital in Phnom Penh on January 18.

The medals and certificates were conferred to the Chinese military doctors for their contributions to helping Cambodia fight the COVID-19 pandemic and improving the diagnosis and treatment of diseases at the PreahKetMealea Hospital.

Lieutenant General Ly Sovan, director of the PreahKetMealea Hospital, the general hospital of Royal Cambodian Army, said that the 15 years’ continuous assistance provided by the Chinese military medical expert team truly reflects the brotherly friendship between Cambodia and China and the two militaries.

Li Jingfeng, military attaché of the Chinese Embassy in Cambodia, said that the work of the expert team is the epitome of the cooperation between China and Cambodia and reflects the practice of the core principle of the China-Cambodia community with a shared future in the field of military health services. It will be continued in the future to better serve peoples of the two countries.

The 15th batch of Chinese military medical experts was sent to Cambodia in January 2020. In response to the raging global COVID-19 pandemic, the members and their counterparts from the PreahKetMealea Hospital jointly established a nosocomial infection management system, organized a fever clinic work team, strictly managed personnel control procedures, and formulated standards for diagnosis and treatment of suspected cases.

To date, there have been no cases of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients and medical staff of the PreahKetMealea Hospital, setting a benchmark for the pandemic prevention and control work in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and even Cambodia.