While Cambodia is filling in lakes and selling the family jewels by long-term leasing islands, efforts to increase tourism will have to include more than real estate.

Those in charge will also have to attend to pesky details like diseases, however, if they want their beaches littered with greased-up pink people in skimpy costumes.

Cambodia and Thailand are getting ready to begin working together to fight malaria, with the Royal Thai Army and Cambodia's Ministry of Defense combining forces on a two-year eradication project along the mutual border.

The fact that Cambodia has actually run out of the chemical that kills mosquito larvae doesn't bode well, however, especially since this is happening during an unprecedented outbreak of Dengue fever that is killing people all over Southeast Asia.

“We’ve run out of Abate,” Dr. To Setha said on Monday, referring to the granular form of the chemical that is used to kill the larvae of the dengue mosquito in its main breeding site in Cambodia – water-storage containers.

His center, which has a staff of nine and an annual budget of $150,000, depends on various donor agencies, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, for money to buy Abate, insecticide, spraying machines, and to conduct emergency public education.

Modern trends are being fingered as one factor in the ferocity of this year's outbreak.

In a worrying harbinger of the future, globalisation and rising prosperity in Asia's huge cities are cited as key reasons for dengue's growing prevalence. The Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries dengue - known as the "bone-breaker" illness because of its joint pain - multiplies in clean water, with every pool, discarded plastic bag or tin can a potential breeding ground during the rainy season.

The migration of workers in the region and rapid urbanisation are other factors.

Although the outbreak is widespread across the region, it's poorer countries suffering the most ... go figure. World Health Organization (WHO) figures cite 25,000 cases in Cambodia that have left 300 children dead ... three times the 2005 toll.

With the annual cost of effective mosquito abatement estimated to be about 20 US cents per household, it seems a no-brainer that the money for the projects that could accomplish so much, but has been slow in coming ... if it comes at all ... would be well spent.

This year the rainy season started two months early. If an ever-warming planet keeps this trend going, battling mosquitos before they take over the Earth will be an important challenge.

By the way, I've had Dengue twice, and can personally attest to the fact that it's a miserably painful illness. Some reports have it that the outbreak in Cambodia now is of the hemorrhagic variety, which is even worse. The more mosquitos, the more the disease spreads, and in a wet, warm place ... possibly getting wetter and warmer over the next years ... that runs out of stuff necessary to control the bugs, if someone doesn't pay now, there will be hell to pay later.