International Reused Syringes in Pakistan Infected More Than 900 Children In A Single Town With HIV

[MPD-Psycho]

Obvious tragedy aside, this sounds like something you’d hear from 20+ years ago.

 

[tramendous]

Officially the worst headline I've seen this month.

Reused Syringes Infected Hundreds of Pakistani Children With HIV
More than 700 people have tested HIV positive in a southeastern Pakistani town

​

Unsafe, but common, practices such as reusing syringes and drips caused hundreds of Pakistani children to be infected with HIV, according to a World Health Organization team investigating an outbreak in a poor southeastern town.

The WHO’s preliminary findings, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and presented to Pakistani health officials Friday, offer a window into how more than 650 children tested positive for HIV in one town during six weeks of government tests, while nearly all their parents tested negative.

“Unsafe injection practices and poor infection control is likely to be the most important driver of the outbreak,” the WHO-led team said in the presentation to officials. The WHO said its investigators are assessing the impact of the outbreak.

The infections first surfaced in late April, when a local doctor in Ratodero, a town of more than 330,000 people, raised alarm bells about children mysteriously testing HIV positive. As a result, the government decided to offer screenings to the entire town.

Out of the more than 27,000 people who volunteered for HIV screening in Ratodero, 798 had tested positive as of Thursday, according to government data reviewed by the Journal. Of the infected, most were children under the age of 5.

Before the screening, a little more than 1,000 children were registered as HIV positive in the entire country, according to the WHO.

Police last month arrested a Ratodero pediatrician, Muzaffar Ghangro, alleging that his reuse of syringes was the source of the infections. Dr. Ghangro’s lawyer said his client is innocent. He has been charged with medical malpractice.

In its presentation, the WHO-led team concluded “it is not possible to exclude the role of many other clinics, hospitals, and unlicensed health-care providers, considering the universally poor injection and blood-safety practices,” raising questions over how widespread the problem could be across Pakistan.

Health authorities in Sindh, a province of about 48 million people that includes Ratodero, closed more than 500 clinics run by unlicensed doctors after the infections surfaced. They also shut down three unregistered blood banks in Larkana, the district where Ratodero is located.

“This should be a wake-up call for Pakistan’s health-care system,” Zafar Mirza, Pakistan’s newly appointed federal health minister, said at a news conference Friday. “A time has come for us to make public health a fiscal priority,” he said, without elaborating. Pakistan has one of the world’s lowest rates of health-care spending as a proportion of gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.

It is unclear whether a screening campaign would take place across the nation, but Sindh’s health minister said Friday she planned to set up more testing centers in the province. “Syringes are not only being reused in Ratodero; this is happening elsewhere, too,” said Azra Fazal Pechuho, adding that authorities in her province were cracking down on the practice.

The WHO said there was a need to work with parents, and health-care professions, to warn against the rampant overuse of syringes and drips. “Educating the community is critical,” said the WHO’s Oliver Morgan, who leads the team investigating the outbreak. “People think they need an injection” to feel better, he said, and “often they do not.” Many doctors don’t refuse the request, said Dr. Pechuho, as it fetches them more fees.

Pakistan doesn’t have enough antiretroviral drugs to deal with the new infections, according to health officials. Supplies, which were expected from India this week, are now due at the end of the month. The Sindh government said it has allocated $6.4 million toward people’s treatment, including funding antiretrovirals whose course would run for life. The allocation is for the continuing fiscal year, a spokeswoman for Dr. Pechuho said, and fresh funds will be issued every year. The WHO and other health organizations are helping fund medicines until next year.

For the parents of children who are infected, the problem is a lack of quality care in Ratodero. Many families the Journal interviewed traveled hundreds of miles to cities to seek treatment that was often unaffordable. The local government plans to open a new center to treat children this month, but parents say they would prefer to treat their children elsewhere even if the care is out of their reach.

Tarique Hussain, who earns $220 a month as a soldier in the Pakistani army, said he had to sell his father’s inheritance to raise money for his son’s treatment. Mr. Hussain’s son was among the children diagnosed positive by Imran Akbar Arbani, the doctor who first raised alarm bells about the infections, in April.

Now 4 years old, Sarfraz Ali had been treated for a recurring fever and diarrhea “by at least 13 to 14 people in two years,” Mr. Hussain said, starting in 2017 with Dr. Ghangro, one of the few licensed physicians in Ratodero.

“We tested him for everything—malaria, hepatitis, typhoid,” said Mr. Hussain, “but he grew lifeless with every passing week.” When his wife broke the news that their son was HIV positive in April, “I couldn’t believe what I had heard,” said Mr. Hussain, who was stationed in another state at the time.

He rushed home to test his wife and three other children. No one else tested positive. While the government has pledged to fund antiretrovirals, “who will pay the bills for all the other ailments that are attacking my son because of his HIV?” Mr. Hussain asked.

“My child was supposed to have his whole life ahead of him,” he said. “Now it’s over before it could even begin.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/reusin...istani-children-with-hiv-11560503649?mod=e2fb


Previously:

Shit like this is probably why they shoot up vaccine clinics. The taliban and other extremist groups believe in conspiracies that the vaccine centres spread the disease

 

[Staph infection]

How dare you you call my outrage fake you little shit I have family members in that country you try an belittle and besides that I can see the disdain you have for people born into lower circumstances especially since they are Muslims or don't look or talk like you. I hope you get aids.

Can you help me with the AIDS? Have some of your family members (who are probably married first cousins) smuggle some tainted needles over to the US for me. If you were in front of my I would slap your face with the bottom of my sandal.

 

[ObamaPhoneLady]

How dare you you call my outrage fake you little shit I have family members in that country you try an belittle and besides that I can see the disdain you have for people born into lower circumstances especially since they are Muslims or don't look or talk like you. I hope you get aids.

He literally said 'how dare you' LMFAO.

 

[RabbitPunch36]

Can you help me with the AIDS? Have some of your family members (who are probably married first cousins) smuggle some tainted needles over to the US for me. If you were in front of my I would slap your face with the bottom of my sandal.

You wouldn't do shit if I was in front of you.

 

[vapor&dust]

He literally said 'how dare you' LMFAO.

That confirmed he's Paki and he's also accusing others of marrying first cousins lol. Pakis do that and have institutionalized pederasty.

 

[Garnet_StrongerThanYou]

Well, looks like their health care system is worse than how their government treats women.

Now now then. Recently a bill was passed allowing husbands to beat their wives “lightly”

 

[Social Distance Warrior]

Now now then. Recently a bill was passed allowing husbands to beat their wives “lightly”

What irks me most about the term "toxic masculinity" is that the SJWs, WPEMs who use it never apply it to nations and cultures like this

 

[Garnet_StrongerThanYou]

What irks me most about the term "toxic masculinity" is that the SJWs, WPEMs who use it never apply it to nations and cultures like this[

What irks me most about the term "toxic masculinity" is that the SJWs, WPEMs who use it never apply it to nations and cultures like this

I think it’s just so obvious that these cultures are over the top misogynistic and primitive.

They wouldn’t be able to even preach their agenda there safely or go around uncovered.

 

[Staph infection]

You wouldn't do shit if I was in front of you.

I would hold you down and shave your beard.

 

[Arkain2K]

Panic in Pakistani City After 900 Children Test Positive for H.I.V.
Health workers say the reuse of syringes drove the outbreak in the city of Ratodero.
By Zia ur-Rehman and Maria Abi-Habib | Oct. 26, 2019

Muzaffar Ghanghro, a pediatrician, was charged with manslaughter in connection with the outbreak in Ratodero. He says he is innocent and has never reused syringes.​

RATODERO, Pakistan — Nearly 900 children in the small Pakistani city of Ratodero were bedridden early this year with raging fevers that resisted treatment. Parents were frantic, with everyone seeming to know a family with a sick child.

In April, the disease was pinned down, and the diagnosis was devastating: The city was the epicenter of an H.I.V. outbreak that overwhelmingly affected children. Health officials initially blamed the outbreak on a single pediatrician, saying he was reusing syringes.

Since then, about 1,100 citizens have tested positive for the virus, or one in every 200 residents. Almost 900 are younger than 12. Health officials believe the real numbers are probably much higher, as only a fraction of the population has been tested so far.

Gulbahar Shaikh, the local journalist who broke the news of the epidemic to residents of his city and the nation in April, watched as his neighbors and relatives rushed to clinics to line up and test for the virus.

When officials descended on Ratodero to investigate, they discovered that many of the infected children had gone to the same pediatrician, Muzaffar Ghanghro, who served the city’s poorest families and appeared to be at the center of the outbreak.

Mr. Shaikh panicked — that was his children’s pediatrician. He rushed his family to be tested, and his 2-year-old daughter was confirmed to have the virus, which is the cause of AIDS.

“It was devastating,” said Mr. Shaikh, a 44-year-old television journalist in Ratodero, a city of 200,000 whose residents are some of Pakistan’s poorest, with high illiteracy rates.

Mr. Ghanghro was the cheapest option in this city, charging 20 cents a visit for the many parents here who earn less than $60 a month.

The pediatrician treated all six of Imtiaz Jalbani’s children, four of whom contracted H.I.V. His two youngest, 14-month-old Rida and 3-year-old Sameena, have died.

Mr. Jalbani, a laborer, said he first grew alarmed when he saw Mr. Ghanghro rummage through the trash for a syringe to use on Ali, his 6-year-old son, who is also infected. When Mr. Jalbani protested, he said, Mr. Ghanghro snapped at him and told him he was using an old syringe because Mr. Jalbani was too poor to pay for a new one.

“He said, ‘If you don’t want my treatment, go to another doctor.’” Mr. Jalbani said. “My wife and I had to starve ourselves to pay for the medicine.”

Mr. Ghanghro was arrested and charged by the police with negligence, manslaughter and causing unintentional harm. But he has not yet been convicted, and in an interview with The New York Times, he insisted he is innocent and has never reused syringes.


The doctor recently renewed his medical certificate and now works as a general practitioner at a government hospital on the outskirts of Ratodero, despite laws that make the reuse of syringes an offense that is not eligible for bail.

Health officials now say that Mr. Ghanghro is unlikely to be the sole cause of the outbreak. Visiting health workers saw many cases of doctors reusing syringes and I.V. needles. Barbers take the same razor to the faces of multiple customers, they said, and roadside dentists crack away at patients’ teeth on sidewalks with unsterilized tools.

Such unhygienic practices are prevalent across Pakistan and probably the leading cause of the country’s surging rates of H.I.V. infection, according to health officials. But Ratodero is so poor that such practices are likely to be much more common, as residents struggle to make ends meet and scrimp wherever they can.

At first, the government was slow to respond to Ratodero’s outbreak and barely had the resources to test residents and treat the sick. Teams of international health workers from various countries came to the city to help, and the World Health Organization donated hundreds of testing kits.

Testing centers were set up in government buildings, while dozens of yellow tents sprouted up across the city to deal with the influx of terrified residents eager to be tested.

Still, with not even a quarter of the city’s population yet tested for the virus, officials are dreading that the real number of infected is much higher than the 1,112 confirmed cases so far.

The daughter of Mr. Shaikh, the journalist, has become an outcast in the community, he said. Education about the virus is sparse, and many fear contracting it by touch. Relatives won’t hug the girl, and other children will not play with her.

At school, the sick children are segregated from the healthy, forced to sit on one side of the classroom.

“My wife and I, fortunately, we are literate. We hug and love our daughter. But our relatives stopped touching her and are now reluctant to visit us,” said Mr. Shaikh, whose daughter is now responding well to treatment.

Five months on, the panic of the outbreak still hangs over Ratodero. Doctors and paramedics are struggling to cope with the number of H.I.V.-positive patients, while residents are still lining up to be tested.

Farzana Bibi was one of those waiting in a long line that snaked hundreds of yards out the door of a government hospital. She had just had her 3-year-old son tested after he had run a fever for three months, and doctors had confirmed that he was H.I.V.-positive. She held his hand as they waited in line to receive medicine for his treatment, a desperate frown on her face.

“It seems it is God’s affliction on us,” she said. “How could so many of our children have such a terrible disease?”

The outbreak in Ratodero reflects a nationwide uptick in H.I.V. cases, despite a global decline of new infections.

From 2010 to 2018, the number of H.I.V.-positive people in Pakistan nearly doubled, to about 160,000, according to estimates by UNAIDS, the United Nations task force that specializes in H.I.V. and AIDS. During that time, the number of new infections jumped 38 percent in those 15 to 24.

The real number is likely higher; much of the population goes untested, while only about 10 percent of people thought to be H.I.V.-positive are being treated.

The country spends very little on its efforts to counter H.I.V. and AIDS and is nearly entirely dependent on support from other countries for its programs, whether for funding to staff testing centers or to provide retroviral drugs to counter the virus.

“With competing priorities, H.I.V. and AIDS is at the back seat of the government’s agenda,” said Maria Elena Filio-Borromeo, the UNAIDS director for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since 2003, there have been eight H.I.V. outbreaks in Pakistan. And Ratodero had been the site of one before: In 2016, an outbreak hit some 1,500 adult men who had engaged in sex with infected prostitutes, officials said.

But this year’s outbreak in Ratodero is the first time that children have been the most frequent victims on such a large scale, Ms. Filio-Borromeo said.

To counter the outbreak, the Pakistani authorities in May began shutting down the clinics of unqualified doctors and illegal blood banks — many of which were found to be reusing syringes. Months later, however, some of those clinics had since reopened, locals say.

“Unless these quack doctors, barbers and dentists are not checked, the number of incidents of H.I.V. infection will continue going up,” said Dr. Imran Akbar Arbani, a local doctor, who had tipped off Mr. Shaikh about the outbreak as he also alerted government authorities.

In February, Dr. Arbani started noticing dozens of children coming to his office with persistent fevers, from newborns to 8-year-olds.

“In Pakistan, the government does not act unless there is a national uproar sparked by media coverage,” Dr. Arbani said, explaining why he was quick to tell Mr. Shaikh, the journalist, when he realized the scale of infection.

At least 35 children have died in the area since April 25, according to Dr. Arbani.

The effect on Ratodero’s social fabric has been grim.

In May, one man strangled his H.I.V.-positive wife to death.

And in June, residents in another town discovered their neighbor tied to a tree by her family, after she had tested positive for the virus. The family said they had bound her to prevent her from spreading the virus to the rest of the town.

After public outcry and police intervention, the family untied her. She now lives in an isolated room in the house, her every movement monitored by her family.

Mr. Shaikh said he had sold all his wife’s jewelry and borrowed money in order to afford the treatment his daughter needs.

“But how will the children from very poor families live?” he asked. “At the beginning, there was attention and an outcry, the patients were in the spotlight. Now, they are nearly forgotten.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/world/asia/hiv-aids-pakistan-ratodero.html

 

[EL CORINTHIAN]

That's absolutely tragic. Poor kids are born in a shit hole and then get aids because some dumb fuck doctor reusing needles.

 

[burningspear]

Strict Islamic law doesnt stop people from getting high, the war on drugs<45>

 

[Arkain2K]

That's absolutely tragic. Poor kids are born in a shit hole and then get aids because some dumb fuck doctor reusing needles.

The most sickening part is that he's still allowed to practice medicine.

Imtiaz Jalbani, whose six children were treated by the paediatrician, told The New York Times Dr Ganghro searched through his bin for an old needle to use on his six-year-old son, later diagnosed as HIV-positive. When Mr Jalbani protested, the doctor said the father was too poor to pay for a new needle.

Four of Mr Jalbani’s children have since tested positive for the virus and the two youngest have died.

Another parent whose three children contracted the disease after being treated by Dr Ganghro told Reuters the paediatrician “applied the same drip on 50 children without changing the needle”.

Dr Ganghro has not yet been convicted, and despite laws to deny bail to those accused of reusing syringes, is now working as a GP at a public hospital on the city’s outskirts after renewing his medical certificate.

He has denied all accusations and insists he is innocent.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.in...atodero-ghangro-cases-virus-a9173101.html?amp

 

[MicroBrew]

That's absolutely tragic. Poor kids are born in a shit hole and then get aids because some dumb fuck doctor reusing needles.

Less to do with stupidity and more about total disregard for the lives of poor people. You would be hard pressed to find a region that has created and treated its poor worse than South Asia.

 

[1pedestrian]

 

[Arkain2K]

Pakistan Study Blames HIV Outbreak in Kids on Bad Healthcare
By The Associated Press | Dec. 19, 2019

ISLAMABAD — A group of Pakistani doctors blames a recent outbreak of HIV among children in a southern city on poor healthcare practices such as using dirty needles and contaminated blood, according to a statement released Friday.

The doctors are also urging Pakistan's government to do more to understand how the virus went from high-risk groups such as drug users and sex workers to the general population. They also warned that there isn't enough medication in the city of Ratodero, in southern Sindh province, where 591 children need medical treatment.

The outbreak is extremely worrying, said the doctors, calling it “one of the worst" in Pakistan. They studied medical data of 31,239 people in Ratodero, where the HIV outbreak took place and who agreed to the study.

Out of that group, 930 were positive for HIV, with 604 of them being younger than 5 years of age and 763 younger than 16 years, according to the study published the international Lancet Infectious Disease Journal.

By the end of July when the study was being completed, only one in three children had started antiretroviral treatment “due to an inadequate supply of drugs and a lack of trained staff,” the statement said.

The study said 50 of the children examined are showing signs of "severe immunodeficiency" but did not specify if they have full-blown AIDS.

“The results, which are the first scientific report on the outbreak, appear to confirm observations ... that HIV was mostly transmitted to children as a result of health care providers using contaminated needles and blood products,” said the statement.

“Pakistan has experienced a series of HIV outbreaks over the past two decades, but we’ve never before seen this many young children infected or so many health facilities involved,” said Dr Fatima Mir from The Aga Khan University in Karachi, the Sindh provincial capital, one of the authors of the study quoted in the statement.

About 70% of Pakistan's 220 million people use private health care sector, which is mostly unregulated and rarely monitored for cleanliness and safety. Among many Pakistanis, popular belief holds that intravenous or intramuscular injections are more effective that medicine taken by mouth, which has increased the use of syringes across the country — and the likelihood of dirty needles being used.

In the immediate aftermath of the HIV outbreak in Ratodero, the government did act quickly, closing three blood banks as well as 300 clinics run by untrained medical staff, the statement said.

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/12/19/world/asia/ap-as-pakistan-hiv-.html

 

[JSN]

Crazy that there could be so many homosexual children in a single town in an Islamic state.

 

[Arkain2K]

2 years since HIV outbreak, children in Pakistan’s Sindh are paying the price​

By Tenzin Zompa | 17 June, 2021​

Two years since the HIV outbreak in Pakistan’s Sindh province in 2019, more than 1,500 have tested positive for the disease, according to data from the provincial health ministry.

Paediatric specialist Fatima Mir from Karachi told AFP that at least 50 children have died in the last 2 years due to the mass outbreak while 30 others, who live in a small village of Subhani Shar, have tested positive.

Subhani Shar is a few kilometres away from Rato Dero where Pakistan’s largest HIV testing and treatment centre is located.

The incident came to light in 2019 after whistleblower doctor Imran Akbar Arbani uncovered a scandal involving the reuse of needles in southern Sindh province. He discovered an alarming number of babies with HIV infection in Rato Dero, where he runs a private clinic.

By November 2019, out of the 37,272 people screened for the virus in Rato Dero district, 895 tested HIV positive and 754 among these infected were children. Another 1,181 were classified as suspected HIV cases.

The officials accused Muzaffar Ghangro, a physician and a popular child specialist in the district, for causing the outbreak but is currently out on bail. He has denied the accusations and said that “other doctors have pinned the outbreak on him because of his successful practice”.

Following the outbreak, the Pakistan government banned the import of conventional syringes, permitting only single-use auto-lock needles which cannot be re-deployed.

However, Dr Arbani said very little has changed even after the government’s order.

“In the first three months, quacks and unauthorised medical practitioners were banned and their clinics were sealed, but they obtained clearance later on,” he told AFP.

Dr Rafiq Khanani, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of Pakistan, said: “Regulatory departments exist only on documents and in offices…practically, they are ineffective.”

Families who are infected with HIV say they are “doomed” that the government is not providing them antibiotics or multivitamins since they could not afford to buy them themselves.

2 years since 2019 HIV outbreak, children in Pakistan's Sindh are paying the price

Our prolific feature about Pakistan’s fascinating politics, economy, society, culture, cricket, fashion and more — stories beyond the routine headlines.

theprint.in

 

[Arkain2K]

Pakistan faces sharp increase in hepatitis infections ​

Pakistan has been witnessing a concerning surge in hepatitis cases across the country, with contaminated blood and the reuse of syringes identified as major contributing factors to the spread of this viral disease.

The National Assembly meeting recently brought to light the continuous rise in the number of hepatitis patients in Pakistan. In a written response, the Health Minister shared data from a survey conducted by the Pakistan Medical Research Council in 2008, which indicated that the prevalence of hepatitis B was 2.5%, and the prevalence of hepatitis C was 5% at that time.

Further, recent surveys conducted in 2018-19 revealed even higher prevalence rates in Sindh and Punjab provinces. Punjab conducted its hepatitis survey in 2018, reporting a prevalence of 2.2% for hepatitis B and a concerning 18.19% for hepatitis C. Meanwhile, in Sindh, the prevalence of hepatitis B was 1.05%, and hepatitis C was found to affect 6.2% of the population.

Health officials are emphasizing that hepatitis is primarily spread through unsafe blood transfusions and the reuse of contaminated syringes. Additionally, the improper sterilization of medical, surgical, and dental instruments in healthcare facilities has also been identified as a contributing cause.

The written response also highlighted other practices that increase the risk of hepatitis transmission. Sharing razors and the use of infected tools by barbers have been associated with the spread of the disease. Moreover, activities like tattooing and ear piercing have been shown to raise the risk of contracting hepatitis.

To address this public health concern, health authorities are calling for greater awareness and education about safe medical practices, proper blood screening, and the use of disposable syringes. They are also urging healthcare facilities to adhere to strict sterilization protocols to prevent the transmission of hepatitis.

The rising number of hepatitis cases underscores the need for a coordinated and comprehensive effort from both the government and the public to tackle this health issue and protect the well-being of the Pakistani population.

Pakistan faces sharp increase in hepatitis infections

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has been witnessing a concerning surge in hepatitis cases across the country, with contaminated blood and the reuse of syringes

www.dentalnewspk.com