We could have almost 25,000 HIV cases in the next 4 years due to high injectable drug use - Dr Jason Mitchell

The clock is ticking as we could have almost 25,000 HIV cases in the next 4 years if we do not deal with the issue urgently.

This has been confirmed by the Chairman of Fiji National HIV Outbreak Cluster Response Taskforce, Doctor Jason Mitchell during fijivillage Straight Talk With Vijay Narayan.

This is mainly due to injectable drug use.

Doctor Mitchell says in the last three years they had a 45 fold increase in adolescents who are becoming infected with HIV, between the age of 10 to 19.

He says this is not as a result of sexual transmission, it is all as the result of the high risk practices that are associated with intravenous drug use.

He also highlighted that doctors in the hospital are seeing a number of opportunistic infections being presented to the hospital, which means that infections that would not normally be in our population are now being present in our population.

When asked on what are the latest statistics and do we expect the major increases to continue, Dr Mitchell says that from what they have seen so far, they assume that the pattern will continue this year.

Watch the full Straight Talk interview below.