Researchers are claiming that the ancient Angkorian Khmer Empire established the world’s first healthcare system within the government structure, with a total of 102 hospitals built throughout the empire, the director of the Department of Temple Conservation and Archaeology at Angkor Archaeological Park under the Apsara National Authority (ANA), presented to a group of international experts from the US, UK and Asia at the workshop, showing their findings on “Buddhism and Traditional Medicine” at the ANA’s Angkor Training Centre on July 20.
“We are not the ones who are saying this, rather it’s being said by scholars who have been researching this for decades. They gathered research from Tibet, Nepal, Japan and Korea to study about the healthcare systems in those countries and they said that it was not the ancient Chinese empire or the great Indian empires nor the whole rest of Southeast Asia, he said.