HIV positive child dies in Rato Dero

47 children have died of HIV/ AIDs in the taluka since epidemic outbreak in 2019

RATO DERO:

A five-year-old boy, F*, who had tested positive for HIV, passed away in Rato Dero on Saturday, lifting the HIV death toll among children since the outbreak of the deadly disease in 2019 in the taluka to 47.

According to F’s father, Razzak Buriro, his son was fine and playing with other children until Friday evening, but his condition began to deteriorate 9pm onwards.

Buriro rushed F to a private clinic located at a distance of five kilometres from his village.

“There, the doctor asked me take him to Larkana,” Buriro told The Express Tribune, adding that he took him on a motorcycle to the emergency unit of a hospital in Larkana where F died around an hour and a half after the arrival.

Closer than the hospital in Larkana was the one in Rato Dero, but it was no use going there as “the facility remains closed at night,” he said. He also complained that “Even doctors at the hospital in Larkana did not deal with patients properly.”

Buriro, a father to five children, had all of his children screened for HIV following the outbreak of the diseases and F had tested HIV positive.

“I had been getting medicines for his treatment from a public hospital every month in hopes that he will recover some day,” said a tearful Buriro. “I never considered the possibility of F dying due to the disease.”

According to Dr Imran Akbar Arbani, a local doctor from Rato Dero, two HIV deaths were reported in the taluka in December last year.

“This is the first death this year,” he said, alleging that “mismanagement was killing innocent children in the area.”

He said, “The government doesn’t seem to be taking the issue seriously, despite scores have been contracting the disease.”

In this regard, Sindh Aids Control Programme director Dr Saqib Shaikh further pointed out that HIV positive persons were immunocompromised.

*INITIAL USED TO PROTECT IDENTITY

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th, 2021.