Erwida Maulia , The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 12/01/2008 7:11 AM
The government has been urged to change its “ineffective” approach to HIV/AIDS, as the number of people infected by the disease continues to grow each year.
Chairman of the Association of Indonesian Physicians Concerned about HIV/AIDS, Samsuridjal Djauzi, said here Sunday the government’s current campaigns, which tend to encourage behavioral change, had proved ineffective in curbing the spread of the disease.
The association projects the number of people in Indonesia living with HIV/AIDS to more than double from 120,000 in 2002 to 270,000 this year.
These figures are much higher than those reported by the Health Ministry, which put the number of cases at 18,000 as of September, with the death rate at 20 percent.
Samsuridjal said most people infected with the virus were not aware of their condition.
“The National AIDS Commission has so far focused only on campaigns for behavioral changes, like promoting condom use or safe sex and avoiding needle sharing among drug users,” Samsuridjal told The Jakarta Post.
“In fact, despite the target of having 50 percent of high-risk people use condoms during sexual intercourse, only 20 percent do so. That’s also more or less the case with drug users.”
He urged the government to start developing “biomedical intervention” as a preventive measure. Actions include promoting male circumcision, which he said could reduce the risk of infection by up to 60 percent, and the use of anti-retroviral drugs.
Another problem is the lack of coordination among state institutions, including the AIDS commission and the Health Ministry, which resulted in “overlapping” and “inefficient” campaigns, he said.
Institutions needed to change the attitude of the National Narcotics Agency, which still perceives drug users as mere criminals, thus obstructing activists’ attempts to promote the use of sterile needles, he added.
Head of the Indonesian Doctors Association’s contagious diseases division, Pandu Riono, said the government should use a combination of all the recommended means of intervention to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS.
He said laboratory tests should be made more accessible for all, healthcare providers should be given better understanding to deal with the disease and infected people should be treated immediately to prevent them from infecting others.
Pandu also said the government should stop subsidizing treatment for wealthy patients and make it free for the poor only, as its policy of free medical treatment for all people living with HIV/AIDS had led to about 200 hospitals nationwide suffering a shortage in anti-retroviral drugs.
But the ultimate problem was not about money but the government’s perception of funds for HIV/AIDS treatment as a “burden” rather than an “investment”, Samsuridjal said.
He said 70 percent of Indonesia’s funds to tackle with HIV/AIDS came from foreign donors.
World AIDS Day falls on Dec. 1. HIV has reportedly infected about 33 million people globally, two million of whom are children under 15. There were an estimated two million HIV-related deaths in 2007.
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