His fevers were so bad that he insisted on sleeping in the rain, and he writhed in pain “like he’d been thrown in hot oil”, says his mother, Sughra.
“He used to fight with me, but he also loved me,” 10-year-old Asma says as she kneels at her younger brother’s graveside.
Not long after her brother contracted the virus, Asma was also diagnosed with HIV. Her family believe both children contracted it from injections with contaminated needles during routine medical treatment at a government hospital in Taunsa, in the province of Punjab, Pakistan.
They are two of the 331 children that BBC Eye has identified as testing positive for HIV in the city between November 2024 and October 2025.
After a doctor at a private clinic linked the outbreak to the hospital, called THQ Taunsa, in late 2024, local authorities promised a “massive crackdown” and suspended the hospital’s medical superintendent in March 2025 – but a BBC Eye investigation can now reveal that dangerous injection practices continued months later.
During 32 hours of undercover filming at THQ Taunsa in late 2025, we witnessed syringes being reused on multi-dose vials of medicine on 10 separate occasions, potentially contaminating the drugs inside.
In four of these cases we saw medicine from the same vial given to a different child. We do not know if any of the children were HIV-positive but this practice creates a clear risk of viral transmission.
Even if they have attached a new needle, the back part, which we call the syringe body, has the virus in it, so it will transfer even with a new needle,” said Dr Altaf Ahmed, a consultant microbiologist and one of Pakistan’s leading infectious disease experts, after watching our undercover footage.
Despite signs on the hospital walls showing safe injection practice we filmed staff – including a doctor – injecting patients without sterile gloves 66 times, and a different expert told us our footage highlighted broader weaknesses in infection control training in Pakistan.
We also watched a nurse rummage through a medical waste disposal box without sterile gloves. “She is violating every principle of injecting medicine,” said Ahmed.
But when we showed our footage to the hospital’s new medical superintendent, Dr Qasim Buzdar, he refused to acknowledge it was genuine. He claimed it could have been recorded before he took over or that “this footage could also be staged”, and insisted his hospital was safe for children.
He told BBC Eye in an interview that he took “immediate” action after being notified of an HIV-positive case at THQ Taunsa, but he said the hospital was not the cause of the outbreak.
Chandio was replaced by Buzdar, who told the BBC that HIV was his “main focus” when he took the job in March 2025 and that he had a “zero tolerance” policy for unsafe infection control.
“We conducted training programmes for the paramedics and staff nurses on how to prevent and defeat HIV. The most important part is our section on infection prevention control. They have been properly trained in this,” he said.
BBC Eye’s evidence, however, proves that unsafe practices continued eight months later.
When we showed Buzdar our undercover footage, he insisted it had been filmed before his tenure or that it had been staged.
When asked what he would say to local parents watching this footage, he said: “I can say to them with certainty, with confidence, that you should get your treatment done at THQ Taunsa.”
In a statement, the local government said that “no validated epidemiological evidence” had “conclusively established THQ as a source” of the outbreak.
It added that a joint mission between the children’s charity Unicef, the World Health Organization and the regional healthcare department had highlighted “the role of unregulated private practices” and “the contribution of unscreened blood transfusions”.
But BBC Eye has been leaked the joint mission’s April 2025 inspection report into the city’s outbreak, which found many of the same issues as our investigation into THQ Taunsa.
“Conditions were especially concerning in the pediatric emergency room,” the report says – this is one of the departments BBC Eye filmed in.
BBC
