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Little Sarah, who was barely 16 months old, was recently suffering from a high fever.
Several doctors had tried to help him and had failed. Iman's mother, passing from one doctor to another in a desperate attempt to save her child, met on February 22 in front of Dr. Imran Akbar's clinic in Ratodero.
"They have done almost all the tests, including malaria and typhoid," Dr. Imran said. "She also had an infection in her chest, so I advised them to have her tested for HIV. When the report came back from the local screening center, it was revealed that she was HIV positive. To confirm the result, I sent it to the Aga Khan University Hospital, where the results were similar.
For Dr. Imran, it was a shocking discovery. "Not only because of his age but also because none of his parents had HIV," he said. "Usually, what happens is a vertical transmission from mother to daughter, but in this case, the father and mother were negative but the girl was positive."
Something is wrong and Dr. Imran had the agonizing impression that Sarah's strange case is not an isolated case. "I started counseling HIV tests for all the babies who came to my clinic every day," Imran said, gesturing with his handwriting.
Fifteen days, 20 HIV-positive patients. All children. Sarah was not an outlier.
"Dr. Ghulam from Sindh's AIDS control program came to see me the next day and told me that he did not recognize my information and dismissed it," Dr. Imran said.
"I informed him that he might have doubts about my reports but that he could not deny them outright and that the Sind government should have these children tested by themselves with their own. kits. "
Health Secretary Saeed Ahmed Awan became aware and government camps were set up.
Different kits gave the same results.
"I have now identified 85 children in total," he said. "There have been more than 600 cases in the government camp. If we add these numbers, the total number goes to 700. "
And Dr. Imran is convinced that this figure represents only a very small portion of the total number of HIV cases in the region.
"This is only the visible part of the iceberg that I have disclosed," he said, putting an extra emphasis on the "I". "I'm afraid the actual number is in the thousands rather than the hundreds. I hope I'm wrong. "
What happens to children in whom HIV has not been diagnosed yet? "The virus is turning into AIDS," said Dr. Imran. "If their CD4 cell count goes down, the virus turns into AIDS."
Children and babies who have been diagnosed with HIV also have a difficult life. "They can not miss a single day of treatment. You know that when you take a course on antibiotics, you have to stick to it until the end of the course. It's similar, but it has no end, you must take it as long as you live. "
The repercussions do not stop there. In the absence of education, HIV-positive patients have been shown to be rejected not only by their friends and peers, but also by their families. What impact will this have on their mental health? "Depressed," Dr. Imran said, shaking his head. "They will grow depressed."
According to Dr. Imran, the government has let the population down by not participating in awareness raising. "World AIDS Day is celebrated on December 1," he said. "I've been trying to educate the public on the issue for 15 years that day, but I've never seen a single government official do anything about it. The SACP was created 24 years ago. They have been around since 1995. Why do not they inform people about the spread of HIV? More information has been released in the last 20 days than in the past 25 years. "
The collective consciousness of the country may not be long in getting away from these children, whether their number is hundreds or thousands, but for them nothing moves. These children, most of whom are too young to speak, let alone understand what is happening to them, have been sentenced to life in perpetuity and irrevocable.
And this, as Dr. Imran warned, is only the tip of the iceberg.
The names have been changed to protect the identity.
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