An ‘explosive’ jump in cases is linked to a boom in methamphetamines and dangerous drug practices.
The jump in cases can only be described as “explosive”, said Dr Kesaia Tuidraki. In hospitals and clinics across Fiji, doctors used to diagnosing a trickle of HIV infections are now confronting a flood.
Just three years ago the archipelago reported 245 new cases. But by 2024, the government said that figure had jumped 550 per cent to 1,583, earning Fiji a grim new title: after decades of minimal spread, the tropical paradise now has the world’s fastest growing HIV epidemic.
“By the time we realised what was happening, boom, the explosive numbers came in,” said Dr Tuidraki, acting country director at Medical Services Pacific (MSP), which runs sexual health clinics in Fiji. “Honestly, I think we became complacent… now we’re left racing to just catch up.”
The sudden spiral is linked to a boom in methamphetamines.
The archipelago, home to some 900,000 people across hundreds of islands, has for years been a transit point on the ‘Pacific drug highway’. But since 2020 domestic consumption has surged, as the pandemic disrupted illicit trade routes.
“The big impact here was Covid,” said Eamonn Murphy, the Asia-Pacific region director of UNAIDS. “Drug supply used to transit through Fiji, it wasn’t really a domestic market. But during Covid, the drug trade got stuck there. That’s when increasing use of injecting drugs met a background epidemic that had been neglected.”
Read the full news story at The Telegraph.
Source : The Telegraph
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