Doctor Who Caused Mass HIV Outbreak Sentenced to 25 Years

Doctor Who Caused Mass HIV Outbreak Sentenced to 25 Years

Yem Chroeum, 55, was accused of reusing needles and syringes on patients in his unlicensed clinic, spreading the virus.

Yem Chroeum, left, an unlicensed medical practitioner, sits in a car as escorting by prison guards after a verdict announcing of the Battambang provincial court in Battambang province, northwest of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015. The Cambodian court sentenced Yem Chroeum to 25 years in prison Thursday after finding him responsible for infecting more than 100 villagers with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, by reusing unsanitized syringes. At least 10 of the infected people have died. (AP Photo/Mai Vireak)

Hul REaksmey, VOA Khmer

03 December 2015

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School of Vice: Tragic and devastating as this case is to his victims, he is a study in miniature when compared to the virus of mindless and deliberate destruction waged against the Khmer people and their country by the Hanoi-backed CPP regime within the last 30 years plus. The scope for malpractice in similar cases remain alarmingly vast and prevalent at every level of civil society and, in the majority of cases, are symptoms and by-products of the ruling party's overriding political agenda and the reciprocal patronage and protection it offers to its affiliates as bait and insurance against wrong-doings. 

It was by way of like incentive-based "empowerment" schemes and promises of rank and status craved by so many of the disenchanted rural and urban youth in the 1970s that propelled so many of them to take up arms against their rulers, rather than, principally or necessarily, the "terror" of the American bombing campaign as insinuated by some CPP apologists. The largely ineffectual nature and impact of this random campaign has since been noted and attested to by the protagonists themselves, including the Vietcong guerrillas and some Cambodian leaders at the time such as the late prince Sihanouk who had spent time with his North Vietnamese allies in the Cambodian jungle.     

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PHNOM PENH—

An unlicensed doctor who caused a mass outbreak of HIV in Battambang province through the re-use of infected needles has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Yem Chroeum, 55, was accused of reusing needles and syringes on patients in his unlicensed clinic, spreading the virus.

The Battambang court found him guilty of “running a clinic without a license from the Ministry of Health, intentionally causing HIV transmission to other people, and torture due to the deaths of victims that occurred in Sanke district’s Roka commune, Battambang province, from 1996 to 2014.”

Yem Chroeum was fined more than $1,200 and is barred from practicing healthcare.

In all, 119 people contracted HIV following services at his clinic, an investigation last year found. Many claimed he was a popular health care provider in their village.