Fiji recorded more than 1,000 HIV cases in 2024: an estimated 3,000 new cases by the end of 2025

Fiji, located in the South Pacific of Oceania and with a population of less than one million inhabitants, has become the focus of one of the fastest-growing epidemics of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), after registering 1,583 new cases of HIV in 2024.

"This represents the highest figure in the country's history, a 13-fold increase over our usual five-year average. In just five months, more than 800 new cases have been confirmed," declared the Deputy Minister of Health and Medical Services, Penioni Ravunawa.

According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in 2014, the country had fewer than 500 people living with HIV. By 2024, that figure had skyrocketed to approximately 5,900, an eleven-fold increase.

"At this rate, we could exceed 3,000 cases by December. This is a national crisis and it's not letting up," he added.

For his part, Sesenieli Naitala, founder of the Fiji Survivors Support Network, which provides support to sex workers and drug users, told the BBC that the youngest person with HIV he has known was 10 years old.

You can also read: They discover a new species of dragonfly in the Fiji Islands | De Último Minuto

The basis of the HIV epidemic in Fiji is a growing trend of drug use, unprotected sex, and needle sharing. In addition, it involves so-called 'bluetoothing' or 'hotspotting', a term that refers to a practice in which an intravenous drug user extracts their blood after a dose and injects it into a second person, who can then do the same with a third, and so on. "They not only share needles, they also share blood," commented Kalesi Volatabu, executive director of the non-governmental organization Drug Free Fiji. Another factor was 'chemsex' (English acronym that combines the concepts of chemistry and sex), in which people use drugs before and during sexual relations.

In addition, over the past 15 years, Fiji has become a major hub for the trafficking of crystal methamphetamine in the Pacific. This is largely due to its geographical location between East Asia and America, some of the world's largest producers of this drug, and Australia and New Zealand, the world's highest-income markets, BBC detailed.

Meanwhile, national statistics indicate that injecting drug use is the most common route of transmission, accounting for 48% of cases. Sexual transmission accounted for 47% of cases, while mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy and childbirth was the cause of the majority of pediatric cases.