
Ten: This is the era of the smallest person with HIV that Sesenieli Naitala met.
When the network of survivors of Fiji began in 2013, this young boy was not born. Now it is one of the thousands of Vegians who have contracted the blood virus in recent years – many of them are 19 years old or less, and many of them through intravenous drug use.
“More young people use drugs,” says Ms. Knightala, who provides her organization to sex workers and drug users in SUVA, the capital, Vijian, to the BBC. “(The boy) was one of these young men who were sharing needles in the street during Covid.”
Over the past five years, Fiji – a small country in the South Pacific has become a population of less than a million people – has become the location of the world’s fastest HIV.
In 2014, the country had less than 500 people with HIV. By 2024, this figure rose to about 5900 – a leap of 11 pharared.
In the same year, Fiji has recorded 1583 new cases-an increase of thirteen times in its usual average for five years. Among them, he was the age of 41, 15 years old or less, compared to only 11 in 2023.

Such numbers prompted the country’s Minister of Health and Medical Services to announce the outbreak of HIV in January. Last week, Health Secretary Pinony Ravonaa in Fiji has warned that more than 3,000 new HIV cases were recorded by the end of 2025.
“This is a national crisis,” he said. “It does not slow down.”
The British Broadcasting Corporation spoke to many experts, preachers and workers in the front lines about the causes of such a height of meteorites in cases numbers. Many awareness of the spread of HIV and the stigma of shame dwelt, and more people were progressing and testing.
At the same time, they also noticed that countless numbers are invisible for official numbers-and that the real measure of the issue is likely to be much larger than the record numbers.
“Blood sharing”
Fair Fi Vegy’s pandemic is a trend connected to drug use, unsafe sex, needle sharing and “Bluetooth”.
Otherwise, this term known as “Spotting” indicates, where this term refers to a practice where the drug user withdraws his blood after being hit and achieved in a second person – he may do the same for the third, and so on.
Calisi Valentu, CEO of drug -free Fiji, has witnessed that it is directly happening. Last May, it was in a regular early morning through the Fejan capital of Siwva, where she provided support and education for drug users in the streets, when she turned a corner and saw a group of seven or eight people gather together.
“I saw the needle with blood – there was directly in front of me.” “This young woman, she had already got the snapshot as she took the blood – then she got other girls, other adults, already lined up in this thing.
“It is not only the needles they share – they share blood.”
Bluetooth technology in South Africa and Lesotho, two states with some of the highest HIV rates in the world. In Fiji, this practice has become common over the past few years, according to Mrs. Viesabo and Mrs. Knightala.

They explain that one of the reasons for his attractiveness is cheaper height: multiple people can live up in one blow and share it with each other. Another is the comfort of the need only for one injection.
It may be difficult to obtain in Fiji, where pharmacies, under the pressure of the police, recipes around the syringes, are required, and there is a shortage of needle programs.
Although there is increased acceptance and approval to offer such programs-which provide clean injection equipment for drug users in an attempt to reduce the transmission of blood transfers such as HIV-has been implemented in a very conservative and conservative country.
Ms. Valvoo says that there is a “radical shortage” of needle needle sites, which nourish dangerous practices such as the participation of needle and bluetooth and put responsibility for NGOs to distribute the syringes as well as condom.
In August 2024, the Ministry of Health and Medical Services in Fiji recognized Bluetooth technology as one of the drivers to rise in the country in cases of HIV. Another was Chemsex, where people use medications – often methamphetamine – before and during sexual meetings.
In Fiji, unlike most other countries around the world, the crystal methyl is often consumed by venous injection.
Moh also found that among the 1093 new cases registered in the first nine months of 2024, 223 – about 20 % – it was intravenous drug use.
Children on the metaphor
Fiji has become a major center for the smuggling of the Pacific Ocean of Crystal Meth over the past fifteen years. A large part of this is due to the country’s geographical location between East Asia and the Americas – some of the world’s largest drug manufacturers – Australia and New Zealand – the highest market in the world.
During that same period, the Meth was spilled and spread throughout the local communities, and developed into a crisis, such as HIV, which was recently announced “a national emergency.”
According to those on the front lines, the era of users is heading down.
“We see more and more of these young people,” says Ms. Valvoo. “They become younger and younger.”
The latest HIV statistics in Fiji indicate the use of injection drugs as the most common way to move to 48 % of cases. Sexual transition was 47 % of cases, while the mother’s transfer to children was cited during pregnancy and childbirth as a cause for most cases in children.
Each person on the British Broadcasting Authority agreed that the lack of education is a major factor in the epidemic. Mrs. Vizabu and Mrs. Knightala are working to change this – Ms. Knightala says it is a greater presence about the risk of HIV spread throughout society, the “Bluetooth” has fallen into her experience.
More people are tested and are asking for a HIV treatment, leading to more strong data about the crisis scale.
But there is still concern that the official status numbers are just the top of the iceberg – a fear of what may lie under the surface.
Collapse
“The ideal storm is a fermentation,” said Jose Sousa Santos, head of the Regional Security Center at the Pacific at the University of Kanetberry in New Zealand.
“Anxiety is at all levels of society and the government in relation to the Veji HIV crisis – not only what is happening at the present time, but as this will be within three years and the lack of Fiji resources,” he told the BBC. “Support Systems – Nursing, the ability to distribute or access medicines to treat HIV – only not present.
“This is what scares us, and the people who work in the area: there is no way that Fiji can deal with.”

After announcing the outbreak of the disease in January, the Vegi government sought to improve HIV monitoring and enhance its ability to address potential issues.
The global alert and response network, which was called to provide this support, said in a recent report that “dealing with these urgent issues through a well -coordinated national response is very important in contrast to the path of the Virus Virus epidemic.”
This report also indicated that the lack of employment, communication issues, and challenges with laboratory equipment and fast testing stocks of HIV and drugs were affecting examination, diagnosis and treatment.
He added that collecting the data is slow, difficult and at risk of error-where efforts were hindered to understand the Virus Virus epidemic and the effectiveness of the outbreak of the disease.
This leaves many experts, salads and daily Vejeen in the dark. Mr. Sousa-Santos expects “ice collapse” from still coming.
He says: “What we see at the present time is the beginning of the collapse, but you cannot stop it, because the infections have already occurred now, or it has already happened – we will not be able to see them and people will not look at the test for two or three years.”
“There is nothing we can do at the present time to stop the number of infections that have already occurred over the past year, and this is happening now. This is really horrific.”
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