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The age of ten: that's the age of the youngest person with HIV that a local activist has encountered.

At the launch of Fiji's Survivor Advocacy Network in 2013, this minor was still unborn. Today he represents one of thousands Fijians to have acquired the bloodborne virus in the last period – many of them in their teens, and plenty through injecting substances.

More young people are using drugs, Ms Naitala states. He (the boy) was one of those adolescents that were passing around needles in public areas amid the health crisis.

Throughout the recent period, the Fijian islands – a minor Pacific territory with a population of less than a million – has transformed into the hotspot of one of the world's fastest growing HIV crises.

In 2014, the islands had fewer than 500 people living with HIV. By 2024 this figure had jumped to roughly 5,900 – an 11-fold increase.

Throughout that particular year, the nation recorded one thousand five hundred eighty-three fresh infections – a 13-fold rise on its standard periodic norm. Of those, forty-one were in their mid-teens or younger, as opposed to just 11 in the previous year.

Exchanging blood

Fueling Fiji's HIV epidemic is a escalating phenomenon of narcotics usage, unsafe sex, needle sharing and bluetoothing.

Otherwise known as blood sharing, this latter term describes a technique where a person injecting drugs draws back blood post-consumption and administers it into a second person – who could then perform identical actions for another person, and progressing.

Kalesi Volatabu, executive director for the NGO Narcotics-Free Fiji, has witnessed it occurring personally. During May last year, she was during her typical early morning walks through Suva, Fiji's capital, giving help and information to drug users in public areas, when she turned a corner and noticed a assembly of several people clustering.

I observed the needle holding blood – it was immediately visible facing me, she recounts. This female youth, she had already taken the shot and she's withdrawing her blood – subsequently you've got other girls, different adults, already forming a line to get the dose with this thing.

It goes beyond needles they're passing around – they're sharing the blood.

Blood sharing has additionally been documented in South Africa and Lesotho, two countries with some of the planet's greatest levels of HIV. In Fiji, this method gained popularity over the last period, per information from both activists.

An important factor for its popularity, they clarify, is a less expensive experience: numerous persons can pool resources for a solitary dose and distribute it among themselves. An additional reason is the practicality of requiring just one syringe.

These are hard to obtain in Fiji, where drug stores, subject to police monitoring, typically request doctor's orders for injection equipment, and there is a lack of safe injection initiatives.

Although there is increasing approval and acceptance for the establishment of these initiatives – which supply sterile injection devices to drug users in an effort to reduce the transmission of blood-borne infections like HIV – implementation in the deeply spiritual and conservative country has shown difficult.

Ms Volatabu says there is a drastic shortage of needle-syringe sites, which is driving risky behaviors like needle-sharing and hotspotting and putting the onus on non-governmental organizations to supply injection equipment as well as protection.

In August 2024, Fiji's Ministry of Health identified blood sharing as one of the drivers for the islands' surge in HIV diagnoses. Another was chemical sex, where individuals consume substances - often methamphetamine - preceding and during sexual relations.

Throughout the islands, unlike most other countries globally, the substance is mainly used via intravenous injection.

The Health Ministry furthermore determined that of the over 1,000 new cases registered in the opening period of 2024, approximately 220 – about 20% – were from intravenous drug use.

Kids on meth

The Pacific nation has emerged as a primary transit point for crystal meth during the last fifteen years. An important aspect of this is due to the nation's strategic position located among East Asia and North and South America – some of the world's biggest suppliers of the narcotic - and Oceanic nations – the planet's top-paying destination countries.

Throughout that identical timeframe, meth has entered and spread throughout local communities, evolving into a crisis that, similar to HIV, was recently labeled a countrywide crisis.

Per information from individuals in direct contact, the demographic of consumers is getting younger.

We notice growing quantities of these young people, states the advocate. They are getting younger and younger.

The islands' latest domestic HIV data identify intravenous substance use as the {most common known|predominant