In Cambodia, melodrama with a message

The sleazy doctor brushes off the advances of a student nurse in the parking lot but asks her out in a hospital corridor. A male nurse enters a patient’s room and realizes she’s the woman he ran into with his motorcycle last night -- and the wife of the nursing school principal.

“Taste of Life,” Cambodia’s first soap opera, has all the usual fodder -- bad girls, do-gooders, love, temptation and numerous “coincidences” -- but it’s not just suds galore.

The creators are weaving messages through the plot lines to help Cambodians improve their health, teach them about HIV/AIDS and fight stigmas associated with the disease.

“Behavior change is the key,” said executive producer Matthew Robinson. “If we have not changed behavior, then the campaign’s a failure, however popular the shows are.... We never forget that we’re not here just to make an entertaining program.”

The drama (“Roscheath Chiveth” in Cambodian) follows five student nurses and a student doctor as they move through a nursing college, the local pub and “Friendship Hospital.” The twice-weekly soap, introduced last week, was created by the BBC World Service Trust as part of a three-year campaign to help the Cambodian government with its health priorities. The British government’s Department for International Development put up $6.4 million in funding.

It’s hard to miss the soap’s health messages, which come almost on cue.

There’s the teenager whose aunt took her for a backstreet abortion. She shows up at the hospital, ill and wearing a bloodstained skirt. Her distraught aunt turns up and a nurse admonishes her for taking the girl to a “bad place,” telling her she should have more faith in hospitals. Student nurses also tell the girl that if she’s going to have sex, she needs to use a condom to prevent pregnancy and disease.

“We don’t think that’s lecturing,” said Robinson, who was executive producer of British soap “EastEnders” for two years. “That’s involving them in the characters and that’s getting the message over.”