ISLAMABAD: While the health ministry has claimed to turn around the situation, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has alleged that Islamabad alone recorded 618 HIV cases in 15 months.

The party’s central information secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram highlighted alarming official data from the Ministry of National Health Services revealing that Islamabad Capital Territory alone recorded at least 618 new HIV cases between January 2025 and March 2026.

“Of these, 498 cases were registered throughout 2025, while an additional 120 cases emerged in the first three months of 2026. The month-wise figures demonstrate a persistent and disturbing pattern of new infections every month, with notable spikes, including 63 cases in July 2025, underscoring ongoing transmission, particularly within urban networks, where adult men constitute the majority of those diagnosed,” he said.

He criticised the government’s “failure” to address the escalating threat, especially in the wake of the devastating HIV outbreak in Taunsa, DG Khan, where negligence involving the reuse of syringes at the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital has already infected over 331 children.

“This is not mere administrative oversight; it represents a shocking dereliction of duty and a blatant betrayal of the fundamental responsibility to protect human lives,” added Akram.

“Despite widespread public outrage and media exposes documenting continued unsafe practices, such as reusing syringes on multi-dose vials and administering injections without elementary sterile protocols, the government has utterly failed to enforce rigorous infection control measures, hold perpetrators accountable, or safeguard the most vulnerable segments of society.”

He also criticised the government’s priorities: “While hundreds of children face lifelong suffering, stigma, and health complications due to this inexcusable medical malpractice, the ruling elite shamelessly squanders public resources on opulent luxuries such as Gulfstream jets and engages in superficial political branding by renaming thousands of Basic Health Units. Meanwhile, millions of children are deprived of education, healthcare infrastructure has deteriorated to hazardous levels, and preventable outbreaks continue to ravage families across the country.

“This is the same indifferent administration that has systematically undermined the landmark Sehat Card programme, which under Imran Khan delivered essential health coverage to over 170 million Pakistanis.”

The PTI leader added that the unrelenting month-on-month increase in HIV cases, even within the federal capital, combined with the horrifying child infections in Taunsa, lays bare the deep systemic failures in disease surveillance, prevention strategies, hospital hygiene standards, and overall governance. “Public health has been relegated to a negligible afterthought as the government remains obsessively preoccupied with its own political survival at the expense of the nation’s well-being.”

He demanded immediate and comprehensive accountability, including independent and transparent investigations into all HIV outbreaks, stringent enforcement of infection prevention and control protocols in every healthcare facility, swift punitive action against those responsible for medical negligence and syringe reuse, and a fundamental restructuring of public health policies to avert further catastrophes.

Turnaround in health sector

Meanwhile, the health ministry has claimed that most of the problems in the health sector have been solved during the one-year tenure of Health Minister Mustafa Kamal.

Spokesperson of the ministry Sajid Shah has stated that a year ago Pakistan’s health sector confronted structural challenges: persistent polio in high-risk areas.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2026