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PAKISTAN-HEALTH-HIV
Over 600 people test HIV positive in Pakistan village
ISLAMABAD, May 26, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Pakistan said on Sunday over 600
people, most of them children, had tested HIV positive in a village in
southern Sindh province.
Concern grew after hundreds of people were allegedly infected by a doctor
using a contaminated syringe in Rato Dero and surrounding villages of Larkana
district.
“Some 681 people, of which 537 were children from 2-12 years of age, had
been tested positive for HIV until yesterday in Rato Dero village,” special
health advisor Zafar Mirza told a press conference in Islamabad.
He said 21,375 people had been screened in Rato Dero, adding “the increase
in the number of patients being tested positive for HIV is a matter of grave
concern for the government”.
Mirza said the “use of unsafe sringes might be one of the causes for spread
of the disease but the government is making all-out efforts to ascertain the
exact cause”.
“Prime Minister Imran Khan is going to unveil drastic measures to prevent
the disease once we get ascertain the cause of the spread of disease”.
Parents in the area fear their children’s futures have been irreparably
harmed after contracting HIV, especially in a country whose masses of rural
poor have little understanding of the disease or access to treatment.
Pakistan was long considered a low prevalence country for HIV, but the
disease is expanding at an alarming rate, particularly among intravenous drug
users and sex workers.
With about 20,000 new HIV infections reported in 2017 alone, Pakistan
currently has the second fastest growing HIV rates across Asia, according to
the UN.
Pakistan’s surging population also suffers the additional burden of having
insufficient access to quality healthcare following decades of under-
investment by the state, leaving impoverished, rural communities especially
vulnerable to unqualified medical practitioners.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1533 hrs