ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Information Secretary Sheikh Waqas Akram Sunday mounted scathing condemnation on the “Form-47 government” for its alleged egregious and criminal neglect of public health, leading to the unchecked spread of HIV infection and turned preventable tragedies into a deep national crisis.
He referred to the alarming official data from the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, revealing that Islamabad Capital Territory alone recorded at least 618 new HIV cases between January 2025 and March 2026.
Of these, he noted, 498 cases were registered throughout 2025, while an additional 120 cases emerged in the first three months of 2026; The month-wise figures show a persistent and disturbing pattern of new infections every month, with notable spikes including 63 cases in July 2025 underscoring ongoing transmission, particularly within urban networks, where adult men constitute the majority of those diagnosed.
He sharply criticised the government’s “abject failure” to address this escalating threat, especially in the wake of the devastating HIV outbreak in Taunsa, DG Khan, where criminal negligence involving the reuse of syringes at the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital has already infected over 331 innocent children.
“This is not merely an administrative oversight, it represents a shocking dereliction of duty and a blatant betrayal of the fundamental responsibility to protect human lives,” he asserted.
“Despite widespread public outrage, unsafe practices such as reusing syringes on multi dose vials and administering injections without elementary sterile protocols were going on as the government has utterly failed to enforce rigorous infection control measures, hold perpetrators accountable, or safeguard the most vulnerable segments of society,” he charged.
Waqas Akram slammed the regime’s “grossly misplaced” priorities and remarked, “While hundreds of children face lifelong suffering, stigma, and health complications due to this inexcusable medical malpractice, the ruling elite shamelessly squanders public resources on opulent luxuries such as Gulfstream jets and engages in superficial political branding by renaming thousands of Basic Health Units”.
Meanwhile, he claimed millions of children are deprived of education, whereas healthcare infrastructure has deteriorated to hazardous levels, and preventable outbreaks continue to ravage families across the country. He charged that this is the same indifferent administration that has systematically undermined the landmark Sehat Card programme, which under Imran Khan delivered essential health coverage to over 170 million Pakistanis.
He emphasised that the unrelenting month-on-month increase in HIV cases even within the federal capital combined with the horrifying child infections in Taunsa, lays bare the deep systemic failures in disease surveillance, prevention strategies, hospital hygiene standards, and overall governance under this Form-47 dispensation. “Public health has been relegated to a negligible afterthought as the government remains obsessively preoccupied with its own political survival at the expense of the nation’s well-being,” he contended.
Waqas Akram demanded immediate and comprehensive accountability, including independent and transparent investigations into all HIV outbreaks, stringent enforcement of infection prevention and control protocols in every healthcare facility, swift punitive action against those responsible for medical negligence and syringe reuse, and a fundamental restructuring of public health policies to avert further catastrophes.
“The Form-47 regime lacks both the competence and the moral authority to protect the health and lives of the Pakistani people. PTI unequivocally calls for an end to this cycle of criminal negligence and urges the nation to demand a responsible, people-centric administration that upholds public health as a sacred national duty rather than treating it as a disposable casualty of incompetent and self-serving governance,” he concluded.
