Volunteers from the Survival Advocacy Network, a group supporting sex workers, and Rainbow Pride Fiji, which works with LGBTQ+ communities, are on hand to speak to those who may be reluctant.<\/p>\n
Ana Fofole and her team at Medical Services Pacific, which runs the clinic, hand out condoms as part of their awareness drive and test for syphilis and hepatitis B.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t just turn up anywhere \u2013 we have to do it the right way,\u201d says Fofole.<\/p>\n
Irinieta Foi, 45, is among those Medical Services Pacific hopes to reach by bringing testing into neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n
Foi, who is able to get a result in 15 minutes, says she stumbled upon the clinic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI decided, okay, why not?\u201d<\/p>\n
Many stay away for fear of returning a positive result, said 28-year-old Ecelina Lalabaluva, who also got tested.<\/p>\n
Transit hub for drugs<\/p>\n
Clinics like this raise awareness about the blood-borne disease and can help pin down just how many people are living with HIV in Fiji and refer them to treatment.<\/p>\n
The number of known cases is around 5000, according to Renata Ram, country director for Fiji and the Pacific at UNAIDS, who says the crisis has been building for years.<\/p>\n
Renata Ram, country director for Fiji and the Pacific at UNAIDS. Photo \/ STR, AFP<\/p>\n
That number was as low as 500 in 2014, according to estimates by UNAIDS, which classifies Fiji as having among the world\u2019s fastest-growing HIV epidemics.<\/p>\n
Transmission rates began to increase around 2019, when a group of \u201cvery high-risk\u201d injecting drug users emerged, primarily in the sex worker community, Ram explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cFiji, like other Pacific islands, for a long time have been transit hubs for drugs from Latin America and Asia destined for Australia and New Zealand,\u201d said Virginia Comolli, Pacific programme head at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime.<\/p>\n
The flow of highly addictive drugs such as methamphetamine and cocaine to those lucrative markets rose sharply after a lull during the Covid pandemic, she explained.<\/p>\n
Those drugs are increasingly seeping into the Pacific\u2019s domestic markets \u2013 in part because of foreign criminal syndicates opting to pay their local facilitators in kind, she said.<\/p>\n
For those living with the virus, the social stigma can weigh heavy in a country where conservative values largely prevail.<\/p>\n
\u2018Wait to die?\u2019<\/p>\n
One of the few public faces of the crisis is Mark Lal, who was diagnosed with HIV two years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Fiji, whenever the topic of sex comes up, everyone just disperses,\u201d says Lal, 24, a gay man who said he is not a drug user.<\/p>\n
He originally knew little about HIV and the available treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was diagnosed, the first thing I asked the doctors was: \u2018What now? Do I just wait to die?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
On his \u201cLiving Positive Fiji\u201d page on Facebook, Lal has fielded questions from more than 100 people.<\/p>\n
Most are aged 17 to 20 and are unsure whether to disclose their HIV status out of fear of discrimination.<\/p>\n
A staff member conducts a blood test at a Medical Services Pacific mobile clinic. Photo \/ STR, AFP<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you come out publicly as someone living with HIV, there\u2019s a chance where you might actually not get a good reaction,\u201d Lal said.<\/p>\n
His own hospital visit for his initial diagnosis left its mark.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw some walking out with fear in their eyes, and I was like: \u2018I want to change this. I want to help people\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fiji has a tough task to rein in case numbers, according to Ram of UNAIDS, who said the country is \u201c15 to 20 years behind\u201d in its HIV efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cA needle-syringe programme is what is very much needed right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government has said it will adopt a plan to prevent the spread of disease through drug injections, but implementation of its programme to provide safe injecting equipment has been delayed.<\/p>\n
For Foi, one of the women attending the outreach clinic, the task is simple.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really important for everybody to get tested.\u201d<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volunteers from the Survival Advocacy Network, a group supporting sex workers, and Rainbow Pride Fiji, which works with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[9092,29816,1288,2512,27056,1403,130504,19555,15248,50496,2566,26092,1888,68612,134,2830,13840,15220,20832,111,139,69,384,42370,67662,83116,31788,1361,87115,102,17450],"class_list":["post-412478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-against","tag-approaches","tag-capital","tag-cases","tag-clinic","tag-defence","tag-epidemics","tag-evening","tag-falls","tag-fastestgrowing","tag-fiji","tag-fijis","tag-first","tag-grapples","tag-health","tag-hiv","tag-like","tag-line","tag-makeshift","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-people","tag-soaring","tag-spreading","tag-steady","tag-stream","tag-that","tag-wildfire","tag-with","tag-worlds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}