90 people in a Cambodian village infected with HIV/AIDS

Cambodian local authorities said Tuesday that up to 90 people in a remote village in the Battambang province of northwestern Cambodia have been tested positive for HIV/AIDS.

Hundreds of residents in Roka village have flocked to have their blood tested for HIV/AIDS at a health center since Dec. 8 after report of the mass infections emerged, said Sim Pov, chief of Roka commune which controls the village.

"As of Tuesday evening, 663 villagers had their blood tested for the virus and 90 of them have been confirmed positive for HIV/ AIDS," she told Xinhua over telephone.

Hei Sik, head of a local HIV/AIDS test program which provides free test for HIV/AIDS to the villagers, said the HIV/AIDS- positive people are aged from 3 years old to 82.

He said villagers suspected that the mass infections had been caused by a physician, who might have used the same hypodermic needles to inject different patients.

Mean Chhi Vun, director of Cambodia's National Center for HIV/ AIDS, Dermatology and STDs, said he has already sent officials to the village to look into the cause of the infections.

"In the first step, we conclude that they have been infected by contaminated needles," he told Xinhua. "The suspected physician has escaped after news of mass transmission."

Cambodia has seen a success in reducing HIV infection rate over the last decade.

The prevalence rate of HIV infections has steadily declined to 0.4 percent among the general adult population in 2014 from 2.5 percent in 1998, according the National AIDS Authority.

Currently, the Southeast Asian nation has some 73,733 people living with the disease.