9,000 Indonesian women HIV positive
Debbie A. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Virtually unknown just a decade ago, drug use through injection is now a major source of HIV infection in Indonesia, which now affects 43,000 people, 9,000 of whom are women, the latest report on the AIDS epidemic revealed on Tuesday.
Titled The AIDS Epidemic Update: December 2002, the report said that the women were infected sexually by men who inject drugs.
The agency added that the vast majority of injecting drug users (IDUs) were male, and behavioral data indicated that over two-thirds of them were sexually active.
The report, published by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) ahead of World AIDS Day next Sunday, is part of a twice-yearly update on the global crisis.
"If current high-risk injecting behavior continues, it is estimated that the number of (IDUs) living with HIV could almost double in 2003, accounting for more than 80 percent of new HIV infections nationwide," the report said.
Official estimates suggest that 124,000 to 196,000 Indonesians are now injecting drugs.
"With needle-sharing the norm, HIV is likely to spread much more widely throughout this population in the next few years," the report said.
It also said that, apparently, a sharp rise in injecting drug use, with the risk of rapidly increasing HIV, was fueled by social and economic upheavals that had hit the country recently.
The report also cited data from the largest drug treatment center in Jakarta, which revealed that the incidence of HIV had risen very steeply among drug users, from zero in 1998 to 50 in 2001.
The agency said that AIDS had killed 3.1 million people this year, including 1.2 million women and 610,000 children under 15 across the world.
In South Asia and Southeast Asia alone, six million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with the incidence in adults estimated at 0.6 percent since the epidemic started in the late 1980s.
It is estimated that by the end of this year, some five million people in the world will have been newly infected by the virus, including two million women and 800,000 children under 15.
Currently, some 42 million people are infected with the virus, half of whom are women.
The fact that more than 50 percent of the HIV-positive people are women is worrying because it could cause more babies to be borne HIV-positive, and women have traditionally been carers.
"There is a vital need to expand activities that focus on people at most risk of infection, as well as a need for more extensive HIV/AIDS programs that reach the general population," the report said.
The agency also said that the AIDS epidemic could rob households and communities of the capacity to produce or afford food, turning a food shortage into a food crisis.
"If such an emergency is allowed to persist, it could generate further social displacement, disrupting education and health systems, spurring migration and worsening the sexual exploitation of women and children -- all factors that favor the further spread of HIV/AIDS," it said.
The agency regretted that only a tiny minority of people living with HIV/AIDS received or had access to life-saving drugs.
It also regretted the absence of minimal services that could protect drug users against HIV infection in certain countries, especially those in the Asia and Pacific regions.