UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations has assured Pakistan that the international community will help ascertain the source of the recent HIV outbreak and work with local authorities to curb it.

A team of experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) has arrived in Pakistan following an HIV outbreak in Sindh, where more than 600 cases have been identified so far. The majority of those infected are children and young people — more than half of them are children under the age of five.

“The WHO team will try to ascertain the source of the outbreak and control it, as well as provide its expertise in the areas of HIV testing, paediatric HIV treatment and family counselling,” said UN Secretary General’s Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq.

Speaking at a Wednesday afternoon news briefing at the UN headquarters in New York, Mr Haq noted that prior to this outbreak, there were just over 1,200 children diagnosed with HIV and receiving antiretroviral treatment in the whole of Pakistan.

The outbreak was first reported on April 25, with a major HIV screening programme having started three days later.

The WHO mission includes experts in emergency response management, epidemiology, HIV clinical care, and infection prevention and control from WHO as well as the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN).

The team is working closely with the ministry in Pakistan and partners, including the Aga Khan University, Pakistan’s Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Programme (FELTP), UNAIDS and Unicef in Larkana.

In a separate statement issued at its headquarters in Geneva, the WHO said it was also ensuring adequate supplies of rapid diagnostic tests and antiretroviral medicines for both adults and children, as well as single-use needles and syringes.

The WHO said the infection of such a large number of people poses “a particular challenge”. On May 16, local authorities established a new antiretroviral treatment clinic for children in Larkana.

Pakistan has one of the worst HIV infection rates in South Asia with an estimated 20,000 new infections each year. Only 16 per cent of the estimated number of people living with HIV had been tested.

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2019