PHNOM PENH, June 28 (Reuters) - Impoverished Cambodia is appealing for international help to fight a major outbreak of dengue fever, which has killed more children early in this year's wet season than in all of the last.

"Dengue is hitting almost all provinces nationwide. We cannot contain the virus with our limited resources," Ngan Chanta, head of the country's anti-dengue programme, said on Thursday.

"We need foreign help" to counter an outbreak that has killed 138 of the 12,700 children the mosquito-borne virus has infected this year, he said.

The virus, which generally strikes during the June-September wet season and in Cambodia appears to hit mostly children, killed 116 of the 12,300 who caught it last year.

Cambodia, still recovering from decades of civil war and the "Killing Fields" of the Khmer Rouge, needed $500,000 swiftly to buy larvicides for use on mosquito breeding grounds, Ngan Chanta said.

Lam Eng Hour said the four Swiss-funded hospitals of which he is deputy director were being swamped by dengue sufferers the facilities treat free.

"We just cannot manage if more and more patients come," he said.

The hospitals had appealed for $7 million from donors, he said, to fight a disease that has reached epidemic proportions in wealthy Singapore as well as striking hard in neighbouring Thailand and in Malaysia.

Lam Eng Hour said many children died of dengue because the hospitals were short of blood for transfusions, and he praised foreign tourists who had responded to appeals by donating blood.

"They are being more than just tourists, they are saving our childrens' lives," he said.

Cambodia's public health system remains rudimentary, with much of its funding coming from foreign aid.

According to the World Bank, annual government spending on health is about $3 per person.

AlertNet news is provided by