A BBC undercover investigation has revealed that over 300 children tested positive for HIV in the town of Taunsa, in Pakistan’s Punjab province, between November 2024 and October 2025. Their families suspect the children were infected by injections with contaminated syringes during routine check-ups at a local hospital.
Local authorities promised “extensive checks” and suspended the hospital director in March 2025. However, the BBC investigation found that dangerous injection practices continued for months.
During filming of medical services at the hospital, incidents were recorded in which syringes were reused in multi-dose vials, which could lead to infections.
In 4 of these cases, the same vial was used to administer medication to different children. It is not known whether any of these children were HIV carriers, but this practice poses a risk of transmission of the virus.
“Even if they put in a new needle, the back part – what we call the barrel of the syringe – could contain the virus, so it will still be transmitted with a new needle,” explained Dr. Altaf Ahmed, a consultant microbiologist and one of Pakistan’s leading infectious disease experts, who saw the undercover footage.
Despite instructions – even on signs on hospital walls – for safe injections, the BBC filmed staff members – including a doctor – giving injections to patients without sterile gloves 66 times.
It is worth noting that when the footage was presented to the hospital’s new medical director, Dr. Kassim Buzdar, he claimed that it may have been recorded before he took office, leaving open the possibility that “the footage was fabricated.”
Dr. Gul Kaisrani, a doctor at a local private clinic, was the first to notice the outbreak in late 2024, when he noticed an increase in the number of children being tested at his clinic and diagnosed as HIV positive.
Almost all the children he diagnosed had previously received treatment at the hospital, he says. He recalls one mother who told him that her daughter was injected with the same syringe that had previously been used on a cousin of hers with HIV, and that the same syringe had then been used on other children.
The BBC collected data from the Punjab AIDS testing programme, private clinics and a database uncovered by the police, identifying 331 children who tested positive for HIV in the city of Taunsa between November 2024 and October 2025.
Only four mothers tested positive for the virus, suggesting that very few cases are due to mother-to-child transmission. The practices recorded at the Taungsa hospital are reminiscent of similar outbreaks in the past in Pakistan.
In 2019, hundreds of children in Ratodero town in Sindh province were diagnosed with HIV, most of them from HIV-negative parents. Pediatrician Imran Arbani told the BBC that their medical history included repeated visits to clinics and multiple injections, “so the transmission must have happened in one of these medical settings.”
By 2021, the number of children with HIV in the area had reached 1,500.
