9,000 Indonesian women HIV positive

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.