ISLAMABAD – Nearly 900 children in the Pakistani city of Ratodero testedpositive for HIV this year and suffered from fevers that resistedtreatment, according to a New York Times reportlinkreleasedSaturday.
After the disease was on its heels in April, the city became the epicenterof a new outbreak that disproportionally impacted children. Healthofficials initially said a single pediatrician who was accused of reusingsyringes was to blame, according to The Times.
Since April, about 1,100 citizens have tested positive for HIV, including900 patients under 12 years old. Health officials suspect the real numberscould be much higher.
Officials arriving to the city discovered that many of the infectedchildren were patients of the same pediatrician, Muzaffar Ghanghrolink, who served many of thecity’s poorest families.
“It was devastating,” Gulbahar Shaikh, a local journalist who broke thenews of the epidemic in April and whose children are patients ofGhanghro’s, told The Times.
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“He said, ‘If you don’t want my treatment, go to another doctor’,” addedImtiaz Jalbani, a laborer who had his six children treated by Ghanghro. “Mywife and I had to starve ourselves to pay for the medicine.”
Four of his children contracted HIV and two have already died.
