ISLAMABAD: Over 2,108 children have tested HIV-positive during 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, according to official data from federal and provincial HIV control programmes.
Sindh reported by far the highest number of pediatric cases, followed by Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, The News reported.
The consolidated figures, reviewed by The News, show that 2,108 children, including 1,274 boys and 834 girls, were registered with HIV across the country from January 2025 to March 2026, underlining the continued spread of the virus among children in a country where health experts say unsafe injections, poor infection prevention practices and unsafe blood transfusions remain major drivers of transmission.
Sindh accounted for the highest number of child infections during the 15 months, with 1,515 children registered as HIV positive, including 923 boys and 592 girls.
Of these, 1,186 child cases were recorded in 2025 alone, while another 329 children, including 188 boys and 141 girls, were registered in the first three months of 2026, making the province the biggest contributor to Pakistan’s paediatric HIV burden.
Punjab ranked second with 418 children registered in 2025, including 247 boys and 171 girls. However, the dataset provided for January to March 2026 carries no new entries for Punjab across all categories, which officials said may reflect delayed reporting or non-updating of the provincial figures rather than the actual absence of new infections.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported the third highest number of paediatric HIV cases, with 111 children registered during the period under review. The province recorded 90 child infections in 2025, including 52 boys and 38 girls, followed by 21 more cases in the first quarter of 2026, including 14 boys and seven girls.
Balochistan stood fourth, reporting 38 child infections during the 15-month period, including 20 boys and 18 girls. Official figures show 33 children were registered in 2025 and another five in the first three months of 2026.
Islamabad reported 22 child HIV cases during the same period, including 14 boys and eight girls. The federal capital recorded 17 infected children in 2025 and another five in the first quarter of 2026.
Azad Jammu and Kashmir reported three child infections, all boys, during 2025, while Gilgit Baltistan reported only one case, also a boy. No child cases were entered for either region in the first quarter of 2026.
Federal health ministry officials said the figures were deeply worrying because they showed that children continued to acquire HIV in significant numbers, especially in provinces where infection control and blood safety remained weak.
“These are not numbers that can be brushed aside. When over two thousand children are infected in just 15 months, it points to serious failures in the health system,” a senior official in the federal health ministry said, adding that most paediatric HIV infections in Pakistan were linked to preventable causes rather than traditional behavioural risk factors.
Officials in provincial health departments said the concentration of child infections in Sindh and Punjab reflected longstanding structural problems, including unsafe use of syringes, reuse of medical equipment in informal settings, poor screening of blood and blood products, and weak oversight of private healthcare providers.
A Sindh health department official said the province remained under pressure because of both old and newly emerging clusters of infection. “Sindh has been carrying a heavy HIV burden for years, and children remain among the most vulnerable. The data clearly shows the scale of the problem,” the official said.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, provincial officials said the rise in reported child infections showed the epidemic was not confined to one or two regions.
“Even where the numbers are smaller than Sindh or Punjab, every infected child is evidence of a preventable transmission route,” a provincial HIV programme official said.
Public health experts have long warned that Pakistan’s HIV epidemic is no longer limited to key populations alone and that growing infections among women and children reflect unsafe medical practices and failures of regulation.
They say the continuing registration of large numbers of infected children should force federal and provincial authorities to tighten blood screening, crack down on quackery, ensure single-use of syringes, and improve infection prevention in both public and private health facilities.
