| Cambodia has had greater success in combatting TB, but that success has been recently been put at risk by political developments in the country. In coordination with the many foreign NGOs that operate in Cambodia, the Cambodian Red Cross provides free treatment to any willing TB patients. TB can usually be successfully cured over the course of six months of active antibiotic treatment. But if that treatment is interrupted or only sporadically followed, strains of TB can emerge that are resistant or even impervious to today's antibiotics. In the months following the July 1997 unrest in Cambodia, many foreign governments withdrew humanitarian aid to the Phnom Penh government, leaving aid workers worried that there might be an interruption in supplies of antibiotics to combat TB. A woman infected with an advanced case of TB recuperates at a Phnom Penh hospital. Beside her is her young son, who lives with her at the hospital. This is a scene that is duplicated at many provincial clinics around the country.
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