“Larkana City Is Loosing Children to H.I.V”, New York Times Reported

In Ratodero, a subdivision of Larkana district in Sindh province of Pakistan, an astonishing 1,132 children in the city and its environs were found infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (H.I.V.), most of them aged 13 or below, a report by The New York Times Magazine revealed.

Not only this, but an additional 408 adults have also tested positive for the virus there, it added.

With the current compilation, a local medical practitioner, Dr Imran Arbani, disclosed that so far, nearly 48 children have died in the area due to the disease.

The riddle of H.I.V. in Pakistan is a crucial one to unravel in order to understand how to resume progress on global health in the post-covid era, the report argued.

As per details, in Pakistan, H.I.V. numbers have long been trending in the wrong direction. The most recent data indicate that only 21 percent of those infected with H.I.V. in Pakistan are aware of their status.

However, according to UNAIDS, there are an estimated 190,000 H.I.V.-positive people in the country, and only 12% of them receive treatment.

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The unusual case of two children in the Ratodero, Larkana, where the parents of the infected infants were tested negative for H.I.V grabbed the attention of Dr Imran Arbani.

With the help of local journalists, Arbani tried to highlight the cluster of H.I.V positive children in the area and the reports gained popularity in the media while World Health Organization (W.H.O) pronounced the situation in Ratodero an emergency. 

After the provincial government sent a group of experts to the district, reports revealed the name of a local physician Muzaffar Ghanghro behind the cases.

“Ghanghro was forced to be tested for H.I.V. when the results reportedly indicated that he had the virus possibly contracted from two blood transfusions he received after a car accident”, it read.

His positive test result somehow meant that he was intentionally infecting children with H.I.V, although he denies it.

The response system for the disease in the area lacks proper facilities as explained by Fatima Mir, who runs the pediatric H.I.V. clinic at Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi.

“The most basic requirements for a center were absent when Fatima got to Ratodero in May 2019”, the report read.

As the report asserted, the public health system in the area is in a pitiful state.

“Its workers are understaffed, underpaid, disillusioned. The work is tedious, and the reward for success can be invisible”.

The report in The New York Times Magazine concluded that the governments need to keep an accurate count of H.I.V cases and track where and how a virus is circulating.

“The government should coordinate a response to choke its spread or at least slow it down”.