International donors along with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Planning kick-started the Kingdom’s fourth Demographic and Health Survey in the capital yesterday.

Earmarked to be published in January 2015, the survey will be conducted by the Directorate General of Health and the National Institute of Statistics, and provincial officials will begin training next month, according to the timetable presented during the conference.

Data for the survey will be gathered on fertility, family planning and maternal and child health from sample interviews gleaned from 600 villages throughout all 24 of Cambodia’s provinces, according to the ceremony’s participants.

The survey will include interviews with a total of 16,500 people between the ages of 15-49.

A swath of international donors including the Health Sector Support Program-Second Phase (HSSP-2), several United Nations agencies, the government of Australia, and US and Japanese international development organisations USAID and JICA, will be providing technical support and more than two million dollars in support of the survey.