Nearly 500 Children Have Been Infected With HIV in a Single Pakistani City. Here ’s What to Know

Nearly 500 children in a single Pakistani city have tested positive for HIV, in an outbreak that has led to the arrest of at least one doctor and highlighted gross inadequacies in the local health care system. As of mid-May, 410 children and 100 adults in Larkana, a city in Pakistan’s Sindh province, had tested positive for HIV, the Associated Press reported. Those numbers have since climbed to 494 children and 113 adults, according to NPR. How did more than 600 people in one area become infected with HIV? Here’s what to know. When did the outbreak start? According to reports from NPR and the AP, parents in April began to notice lasting fevers in their children and took them to a nearby medical center for testing. By around April 24, 15 children ages 2 to 8 had tested positive for HIV, according to an op-ed written by Larkana Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Nauman Siddique. “Recognising the seriousness of this issue,” local officials shortly thereafter set up a “healthcare camp” where children and their parents could be screened for the virus, Siddique wrote. “The results of the screening within the first few days were shocking,” he wrote. “The tests revealed that the parents of the HIV-positive children were HIV negative”—raising questions about how so many children became infected. By May 14, after screening more than 10,000 people, the number of diagnosed individuals had grown to more than 400, according to th...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Infectious Disease onetime Pakistan Source Type: news