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Nightmarish scenes are playing out in one hospital in Taunsa, a city located in the central Punjab province of Pakistan.
According to a devastating investigation by the BBC Eye, at least 331 children have tested positive for HIV between November 2024 and October 2025. The infections seem to trace back to a single facility, THQ Taunsa Sharif, a public hospital run by provincial authorities.
After an undercover filming operation that lasted just 32 hours, the BBC identified 10 separate occasions where the same syringe was reused for the same multi-dose drug vial. Four of those cases involved the same vial given to different children. If just one of those children happens to be positive for HIV, the other three could easily become carriers of the debilitating virus.
“They filled the same syringe and gave it to one child, then filled it again and gave it to another,” one family member of an HIV-infected child told the news agency.
In other words, hospital staff were using the same syringe on multiple patients, which contaminated the multi-dose vial in turn.
“Even if they have attached a new needle, the back part, which we call the syringe body, has the virus in it, so it will transfer even with a new needle,” Altaf Ahmed, a leading Pakistani infectious disease expert told the BBC.
Though a previous hospital administrator had been sacked after a private clinic uncovered the practice in late 2024, Qasim Buzdar, the newly-installed medical superintendent, claimed the footage might be “staged,” per the BBC.
Asked what his response would be to any parent worried about the allegations, Buzdar said “I can say to them with certainty, with confidence, that you should get your treatment done at THQ Taunsa.”
Given that this isn’t the first time hospital administrators have been caught facilitating the dangerous practice, it remains to be seen what — if any — action officials will take. For now, hundreds of children will be forced to manage life with one of the world’s deadliest viruses, a fate which could have easily been prevented with a few simple steps.
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