An update on the severe outbreak of HIV in Kot Imrana, Pakistan

Kot Imrana (Kot Momin) is a small village located in the district of Sargodha in Punjab province, Pakistan. During PCR-based screening by The Health Department at District Headquarter Hospital, Sargodha, in January 2019, 669 (13·38%) of the 5000 people who live in the village were found to be HIV-positive. In this journal, Muhammad Zaid and Muhammad Sohail Afzal reported that the prevalence of HIV in the same village in June, 2018, was 1·29%. The HIV epidemic in Kot Imrana, therefore, continues to grow at an alarming rate with a substantially high mortality. Upon interviewing patients, a quack was found to have used the same syringe on multiple patients, and he himself died of AIDS later in 2018, leaving hundreds of patients HIV-positive. Prevalence was found to be higher in women and children. The detailed interviews of patients who visit our laboratory confirmed that more than 96% of HIV-positive patients were unaware of the modes of transmission of HIV and the consequences of this life-threatening virus. The first case of HIV was reported in Kot Imrana around 15 years ago and now it is the most heavily affected region of Pakistan (a country in which more than 110 million people are at risk of infection), largely because it is located in Punjab, the largest and the most densely populated province of the country.