Fidschi. 'They're not just sharing needles, they're sharing blood': How HIV cases soared in Fiji
Fidschi. 'They're not just sharing needles, they're sharing blood': How HIV cases soared in Fiji
Ten: that's the age of the youngest person with HIV that Sesenieli Naitala has ever met.
When she first started Fiji's Survivor Advocacy Network in 2013, that young boy was yet to be born. Now he is one of thousands of Fijians to have contracted the bloodborne virus in recent years – many of them aged 19 or younger, and many of them through intravenous drug use.
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Over the past five years, Fiji – a tiny South Pacific nation with a population of less than a million – has become the locus of one of the world's fastest growing HIV epidemics.
In 2014, the country had fewer than 500 people living with HIV. By 2024 that number had soared to approximately 5,900 – an elevenfold leap.
'Sharing the blood'
Underpinning Fiji's HIV epidemic is a spiralling trend of drug use, unsafe sex, needle sharing and "bluetoothing".
Otherwise known as "hotspotting", this latter term refers to a practice where an intravenous drug user withdraws their blood after a hit and injects it into a second person – who may then do the same for a third, and so on. (BBC, UK, 05.10.2025)