ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said yesterday over 600 people, most of them children, had tested HIV positive in a city in southern Sindh province. Concern grew after hundreds of people were allegedly infected by a doctor using a contaminated syringe in Rato Dero city and surrounding villages of Larkana district. Some 681 people, of which 537 were children from two to 12 years of age, had been tested positive for HIV until yesterday in Rato Dero," special health advisor Zafar Mirza told a press conference in Islamabad. He said 21,375 people had been screened in Rato Dero, adding "the increase in the number of patients being tested positive for HIV is a matter of grave concern for the government". With about 20,000 new HIV infections reported in 2017 alone, Pakistan currently has the second fastest growing HIV rates across Asia, according to the UN. - AFP