Now That’s Why Pakistan Is A S***hole. Volume 173 Pakistan’s HIV scandal.

Most people with a functioning brain would not trust the Pakistani healthcare system, from some of the accounts I’ve seen it’s like Britain’s NHS but a whole lot worse.

However it’s bad in ways that would never be seen in any other nation that had a properly functioning healthcare system. One of those ways is infection control or rather in Pakistan’s case a lack of it.

According to a BBC report that came out recently hundreds of people, the vast majority of them children, have contracted HIV because healthcare workers decided that using fresh sterilised needles to administer drugs was not necessary.

The BBC said:

“Mohammed Amin was eight when he died shortly after testing positive for HIV. His fevers were so bad that he insisted on sleeping in the rain, and he writhed in pain "like he'd been thrown in hot oil", says his mother, Sughra. "He used to fight with me, but he also loved me," 10-year-old Asma says as she kneels at her younger brother's graveside. Not long after her brother contracted the virus, Asma was also diagnosed with HIV. Her family believe both children contracted it from injections with contaminated needles during routine medical treatment at a government hospital in Taunsa, in the province of Punjab, Pakistan. They are two of the 331 children that BBC Eye has identified as testing positive for HIV in the city between November 2024 and October 2025.

After a doctor at a private clinic linked the outbreak to the hospital, called THQ Taunsa, in late 2024, local authorities promised a "massive crackdown" and suspended the hospital's medical superintendent in March 2025 – but a BBC Eye investigation can now reveal that dangerous injection practices continued months later.

During 32 hours of undercover filming at THQ Taunsa in late 2025, we witnessed syringes being reused on multi-dose vials of medicine on 10 separate occasions, potentially contaminating the drugs inside. In four of these cases we saw medicine from the same vial given to a different child. We do not know if any of the children were HIV-positive but this practice creates a clear risk of viral transmission.”

Ensuring that fresh sharps are used for each patient is not in any way something that could be called advanced medical knowledge but is something absolutely basic. It’s been known for decades that HIV is one of those conditions that can be passed on by contaminated needles or other sharps.

I can’t work out how this bit of basic information wasn’t imparted to medical staff at the clinic? After all it’s not some esoteric bit of medical knowledge it’s been something known for years. There’s no excuse whatsoever for this sort of behaviour, although as the BBC report points out the director of the clinic tried to claim that the BBC’s footage and documentation was either fake or was obtained prior to him taking over the clinic.

The BBC said that half of the 231 cases of HIV in the Punjab region of Pakistan uncovered by government HIV monitoring services were because the infections were hospital acquired.

As if the Pakistani people didn’t have enough problems already along comes a problem that could have been easily avoided but was not. I do hope that these badly trained lackadaisical Pakistani medics are not working anywhere outside of Pakistan and using the same poor quality and dangerous procedures elsewhere. If that is the case then those Western nations that have employed low quality and unsafe Pakistani medics might be looking at a great number of medical negligence cases.

Link

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyrd818gd2o