Ill health has many implications that can lead to poverty. Poor health is the major cause of impoverishment and other forms of social deprivation (e.g., loss of educational and employment opportunities). The cycle of poverty, ill health, and high health care expenditure by households (11% of household income) economically cripples cambodian families. An oxfam study of landlessness found that 40% of new landlessness was related to ill health. (from a report on social and economic conditions in cambodia.)

this is a constant and deep-rooted problem in cambodia. People fall ill, and families sell their land, their animals, their houses, anything they can, in order to get money for doctors. Unfortunately too often the doctors are traditional khmer healers (most of whom are useless, even dangerous) or more formal doctors who are poorly trained and not much better than the traditional healers. In those cases, the family ends up with the family member still sick and now the family is without land or any means to support themselves.