Fiji’s HIV case soares due to Bluetooth, Chemsex and needle sharing.

10: It is the age of the youngest man with HIV he met Sesenieli Naitala.

When she first started Fiji’s survivor’s advocacy network in 2013, the young boy was not yet born. Now he is one of the thousands of sebaceous people who contracted the blood medium virus in recent years. Many of them are under 19, and many of them can be used by using drugs in the vein.

“More young people are using drugs,” he said to the BBC, who supports the sexizers and drug users of SUVA. “He (boy) was one of the young people who shared the needle on the streets during Cobid.”

In the last five years, Fiji, a small South Pacific country with a population of less than a million, has become one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in the world.

In 2014, there were less than 500 people living in HIV. By 2024, the number has soared to about 5,900.

In the same year, Fiji recorded 1,583 new cases. 41 of them were under 15 years old than 11 in 2023.

Such figures stimulated the state’s health care minister to declare HIV on January. Last week, Penny La Buna and the Ministry of Health warned that Fiji will record more than 3,000 new HIVs by the end of 2025.

“This is a national crisis,” he said. “And it doesn’t slow.”

The BBC has talked about why the number of cases is soaring to several experts, advocates, and front -line workers. As the perception of HIV spreads and the stigma decreases, more people are being tested forward and being tested.

At the same time, they also mentioned that many more people remain invisible to the official numbers, and the true scale of this problem can be much larger than even a record number.

Supporting sebum’s HIV epidemic is the use of drugs, inadequate gender, needle sharing, and spiral trend of “Bluetooth”.

The latter term, known as “hot spotting,” is a practice in which drug users withdraw their blood after a hit and inject them into the second person.

Kalesi Volatabu, the executive director of NGO FREE FIGI, has seen it occurs directly. In May, she passed Suba (SUVA), a regular early morning Suba’s sebum capital, and provided support and education to drug users on the streets, and gathered groups of 7 to 8 people.

“I saw a needle with blood -it was right in front of me.” “This young woman, she is already shot and is pulling out blood, and you have a line of other girls, other adults, already hit this work.

“It’s not only the needle they share, but also shares blood.”

Bluetoothing has been reported in two countries with the highest HIVs in South Africa and Resoto. According to MS Volatabu and MS NAITALA in Fiji, this practice has gained popularity over the past few years.

They explain that one reason for appeal is higher levels. Several people can hit one hit and share between them. The other is the convenience of only one syringe.

Under the pressure of the police, the pharmacy can be difficult in sebum that requires a prescription for syringe, and lacks needle myth programs.

In order to reduce the transmission of blood -like infections such as HIV, the reception and approval of the rollout of such a program, which provides clean injection equipment to drug users, has been increasing, but highly religious and conservative nations have been proven to be difficult.

MS Volatabu says that there is a “rapid tribe” of the needle screening, which supplies dangerous practices such as needle sharing and Bluetooth with fuel and sprinkles Onus on NGO to distribute syringes and condoms as well as syringes.

In August 2024, Fiji’s Health Service Department (MOH) recognized Bluetooth as one of the drivers for the rise of the HIV case. The other was Chemsex, where people use drugs during sexual encounters.

In Fiji, unlike most other countries around the world, Crystal Meth is mainly consumed through intravenous injections.

MOH also found that about 20%of the 1,093 new cases recorded for the first nine months in 2024 were due to the use of intravenous drugs.

Fiji has become a major Pacific trafficking hub in Crystal Meth for the last 15 years. Many of these are due to the geographical position of the country between East Asia and America, the largest drug manufacturer in Australia and New Zealand, the world’s highest market.

During the same period, Meth has been poured into the community and developed into a crisis that has recently been declared as “national emergency.”

And according to the people at the forefront, the user’s age is on the bottom.

Volatabu said, “We are seeing these young people more and more.” They are getting younger and young. “

Fiji’s most recent national HIV statistics account for 48%of the cases, citing the use of drugs that can be injected in the most common known infectious mode. Sexual transmission accounted for 47%of cases, and mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy and childbirth was cited as a cause of most pediatric cases.

Everyone agreed with everyone who agreed that the lack of education is the core element of infectious diseases. MS Volatabu and MS NAITALA are trying to change both. And NAITALA says that “Bluetoothing” is out of favor from her experience, with a greater perception of the dangers of HIV spreads throughout the community.

More people are tested, are looking for HIV treatment, and more powerful data on crisis.

But the official case number is just the end of the iceberg and I’m still worried about what’s under the surface.

The New Zealand University of Canterbury University, José Sousa-Santos, says, “The perfect storm is brewed.”

“Concerns are over all levels of society and government in connection with the HIV crisis of Fiji.” Support systems -no ability to distribute or approach drugs for nursing care and HIV treatment.

“It makes us terrifying us, people working in this area: there is no way to deal with this.”

In January, the Fiji government tried to improve HIV surveillance and solve the case.

The global alarm and response network required to provide the support said in a recent report that “solving these pressure problems through well -adjusted national response are important to overturn the trajectory of Fiji’s HIV epidemic.”

The report also pointed out that the lack of employees, communication problems, laboratory equipment and HIV fast tests and inventory of medicines affect screening, diagnosis and treatment.

Data collection is slow, difficult and easy to occur. It interferes with efforts to understand the effects of HIV infectious diseases and the benefits of the onset response.

It leaves many experts, authorities and everyday sebum in the dark. And Sousa-Santos still predicts the “eye situation” of the coming case.

“What we are looking at is the beginning of the eyes, but it can’t stop because the infection is already happening or already happened.

“There’s nothing to do now to prevent the number of infections that have already happened in the last year. This is really terrible.”