AIDS cases may reach one to two million by 2000
AIDS cases may reach one to two million by 2000
JAKARTA (JP): The number of people contracted by the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Indonesia may reach one to two million by the year 2000 if preventive steps are not taken seriously from now, Minister of Health Sujudi said.
Speaking at an Idul Fitri gathering with journalists on Thursday night, Sujudi said that although this estimation, made by international experts, slightly differed from that made by Indonesians, who put the number at 600,000, "the situation would nonetheless be the same".
By that time, he said, the whole world will have 30 million people with AIDS, most of whom would be living in developing countries in Asia.
"That is why we need a special intervention system, which involves all the potentials we have in the community. The most effective way to do this is through supervision," he said.
Official figures show that the number of Indonesians who have contracted the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and have full- blown AIDS has reached to 275.
He said that people must be repeatedly reminded that HIV, which causes AIDS, cannot be transmitted by talking, shaking hands or hugging a person with HIV/AIDS. Or by using the same toilet, cleansed utensils or swimming in the same water as a person with HIV/AIDS.
"HIV dies very easily in open air," Sujudi said.
Health officers, he added, have also been well-trained to cope with a patient who has HIV/AIDS, without getting infected.
AIDS is spread through body fluids in three main ways: through sexual contact, breast feeding and blood transfusions.
Sujudi also explained that aside from preventing the spread of AIDS, the ministry has also recently launched a nationwide program to eradicate polio by the year 2000.
National Immunization Week, costing Rp 45 billion (US$21 million) will be initiated in September and repeated in the same period in 1996 and 1997.
In the first year the central government will provide Rp 15 billion and the local government Rp 5 billion. The rest of the funding will be provided by foreign aid and donor organizations.
Cholera
The ministry also announced that a thorough check has been conducted on hotels and restaurants in Bali which have recently been accused by the Japanese media of spreading the cholera virus and causing scores of Japanese tourists returning from the island to be suffering from it.
Suheni Soedjatmiko of the ministry's public relations office said that systematic tests and laboratory analysis conducted on a large number of hotels and restaurants frequently visited by tourists, tested negative for cholera.
"From the data we have collected, there was no indications of cholera in those hotels and restaurants and in all of Bali from Dec. 1994 to the present time," Suheni stated.
She pointed out that tourists from other countries have not filed complaints or reported being affected by the disease while in Bali.
She explained that a person with cholera will suffer from serious dehydration in a short period of time, caused by very frequent bowel movements and which is sometimes accompanied by vomiting.
"Tests conducted in restaurants in Bali prove negative to cholera," Suheni said.
The cholera rate of 2.5 percent to 5 percent resulted from a 1993-1994 routine check on all the areas in Bali which reported cases of diarrhea.
"So this has nothing to do with the test results for the Bali Hai Cruiser and Uma Sari restaurants, which are frequently visited by Japanese tourists," she added.(pwn)