Pakistan HIV surge: healthcare failures drive 'man-made epidemic', children among victims
Pakistan's rapidly rising HIV caseload is no longer a gradual public health concern — it is a system failure unfolding in real time, according to a detailed report and an editorial published in Pakistan's leading daily Dawn. Children as young as one year old and low-risk individuals are reportedly being infected not through behaviour but through the very healthcare system meant to protect them.
Two Converging Failures
The Dawn editorial identified two structural breakdowns driving what experts describe as a 'man-made epidemic'. The first is the collapse of basic infection control across large parts of Pakistan's healthcare network. The second is the persistence of syringe reuse, despite a nationwide ban on conventional disposable syringes introduced in 2021. Together, these failures have created conditions in which preventable infections are occurring at scale.
Healthcare facility-linked outbreaks have been documented in Larkana, Multan, Karachi, and Taunsa. According to the report, contaminated injections and unsafe medical practices are cited by experts as the primary drivers of the rise — both entirely preventable, yet unchecked due to a lack of implementation and accountability.
Fake Syringes and Regulatory Failures
The Pakistan Medical Association has warned that falsely labelled 'auto-disable' syringes are entering the supply chain — a development the Dawn editorial described as warranting outrage. Instead, both the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan and provincial health bodies stand accused of what the editorial called a 'catastrophic failure'. The editorial further flagged the state's apparent indifference to data transparency as equally troubling.
Alarm at PIMS HIV Centre
Medical experts at the HIV Centre of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad have voiced concern over a rising patient count, with the presence of HIV cases among children described as particularly alarming. Clinicians also warned that disease cover-up and reluctance to undergo testing pose serious risks, with an increasing number of cases being detected among men.
Zubair Abdullah, Programme Manager of the AIDS Control Programme, offered a cautiously optimistic interpretation of the numbers, stating that the apparent rise in cases at the PIMS HIV Centre is
