New Delhi, Sept. 25 -- KARACHI - Ayesha Aftab brought her two children to Kulsoom Bai Valika Hospital in Karachi last spring because they had fevers she could not break. One had what she thought was typhoid. The other had tested positive for malaria. Both came home HIV-positive.

a provincial government hospital, a needle, a child who came in for something else.

The scale of what is happening inside Pakistan's public health system is not hidden from officials. Sindh's Infectious Diseases and HIV/AIDS Research Centre recorded its caseload rising from 10 confirmed pediatric HIV cases to more than 70 in under eight months in the Karachi district alone. The Indus Hospital, which tracks HIV in children across Sindh, reported its pediatric cou...