TAUNSA, PUNJAB — Undercover footage recorded over 32 hours at THQ Taunsa Hospital in Taunsa, Punjab, during November and December 2025 captured staff reusing syringes on multi-dose medicine vials on 10 separate occasions, with medicine from the same vial given to different children in four of those instances. The footage emerged as data from the Punjab provincial AIDS screening programme, private clinic records, and police records identified 331 children who tested positive for HIV in Taunsa between November 2024 and October 2025.

The undercover recordings also showed a hospital volunteer reusing a syringe after injecting a child and a nurse pulling a used syringe from under a counter with liquid still inside and handing it to a colleague for apparent reuse. Staff, including a doctor, were filmed injecting patients without sterile gloves 66 times. A nurse was filmed rummaging through a medical waste disposal box without sterile gloves. Syringes and vials were frequently left open alongside discarded needles on countertops that should be kept sterile.

Consultant microbiologist Dr. Altaf Ahmed reviewed the footage. "Even if they have attached a new needle, the back part, which we call the syringe body, has the virus in it, so it will transfer even with a new needle," he said. "She is violating every principle of injecting medicine," he added, referring to one of the staff members captured on camera.

Private clinic doctor Dr. Gul Qaisrani first identified the outbreak in late 2024 after noticing an increase in children testing positive for HIV at his clinic. He linked the outbreak to THQ Taunsa Hospital. Almost all of the 65 to 70 children diagnosed with HIV by Qaisrani had been treated at the hospital.

Provincial AIDS screening programme data listed "contaminated needle" as the mode of transmission in more than half of the 331 cases. Of a sample of 97 children with HIV whose families were also tested, only four of their mothers tested positive for the virus.

Among those affected was an eight-year-old boy named Mohammed Amin, who died shortly after testing positive for HIV. According to the family's account, they believe both children contracted HIV from injections with contaminated needles during routine treatment at the hospital.

In March 2025, the Punjab government said there were 106 HIV cases among children in Taunsa and intervened in response to the outbreak. Local authorities promised enforcement action against the hospital. The hospital's medical superintendent at the time was suspended in March 2025. Within three months of his suspension, he was working as a senior medical officer at a rural health center on the outskirts of Taunsa.

The current medical superintendent, Dr. Qasim Buzdar, refused to acknowledge that the undercover footage was genuine, claiming it could have been recorded before his tenure or staged, and said the hospital was safe for children. "We conducted training programmes for the paramedics and staff nurses on how to prevent and defeat HIV. The most important part is our section on infection prevention control. They have been properly trained in this," Buzdar said.