Drugs, denial and stigma: the babies and children swept up in Fiji’s HIV nightmare (www.theguardian.com)

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Clare’s young family is one of thousands caught up in Fiji’s HIV crisis, with new cases more than tripling between 2023 and 2024. More than 1,200 people were diagnosed in the first six months of 2025 alone, the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemic amid a decline in global aid. The UN says Fiji’s location as a drug-running hub and escalating local methamphetamine use has fuelled the rapid spread, coupled with unsafe injecting practices and lack of access to clean needles. Low health awareness, cultural stigma and inadequate testing and treatment have exacerbated the crisis.

It has become a disease of the young and addicted, with half of those who contract HIV thought to have done so through contaminated needle sharing or drug preparation. Now, infections are growing among the most vulnerable: the wave of babies who are being born with – and dying from – complications due to HIV or Aids.

The health authorities told the Guardian that one baby a week is being diagnosed with HIV from mother-to-child transmission, with intensive care units seeing an influx of babies needing life support. One child under the age of five is dying every month, says Dr Jason Mitchell, the head of Fiji’s HIV epidemic response, as doctors frantically try to figure out what is wrong with them.

“It is the figure that I feel most pained by, because it is preventable,” he says. “It is inexcusable to have any more children born with HIV.”

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