A long article in the New York Times about a cluster of pediatric HIV cases in rural Pakistan, with no evidence of vertical (mother-to-child) transmission.
In many ways, the public-health system in Ratodero is like public-health systems everywhere: Its workers are understaffed, underpaid, disillusioned. The work is tedious, and the reward for success can be invisible. After all, the public doesn’t realize when disease is prevented; it only knows when it’s not. Governments need to keep an accurate count of cases, track where and how a virus is circulating and coordinate a response to choke its spread — or at least slow it down. Even the most heroic efforts by individual doctors and nurses aren’t substitutes for government leadership and public-health action. When they’re inadequate, preventable outbreaks erupt, the difficult-to-control turns impossible. Diseases unfurl. People die.