Caring can help to make a difference

David and Joyce Djaelani Gordon, Directors of Harapan Permata, Hati Kita Foundation, Bogor

This year's World AIDS Day campaign avails of the slogan, "I care ... Do you?" to create a sustained focus on the role of men in the epidemic.

What is a man's role today regarding Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)? Can men make a difference with this epidemic? Do you care (or not) whether men take that role?

In early 1996, our foundation began simply because "We Care"; a slogan well understood by "addicts helping addicts" recover from drug addiction and the 12-Step Recovery Communities of Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous.

Back then, our direct daily involvement with addicts made us aware of what had already begun and was so evident in the "drug abuse and addicted circles throughout the greater Jakarta area".

Reflecting over the last decade, it is nearly impossible to speak about the range of complexities and problems facing teenagers and young people, rocketing drug use and abuse, drug addiction and addicts, high-risk groups and communities, without also directly including HIV/AIDS as a major issue of contention.

Yet, that is precisely what happened! For the most part drug abusers and addicts -- in relation to HIV/AIDS -- were overlooked, passed by, shoved to the side with contempt and discarded, or considered abandoned people.

Starting in the early 1990s, drug addiction and HIV/AIDS have both raced nearly unconstrained to become full-blown-crisis-and- wildfire situations. There are predictably over four million drug addicts throughout the nation.

What is confirmed, from Sabang to Merauke, is that HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C are both now raging, still without restraint, within this ultra-high-risk community. The numbers of drug abusers and addicts now infected with HIV/AIDS (and Hepatitis C) are growing rapidly.

The number of drug addicts infected with HIV/AIDS in the Greater Jakarta increases daily by the thousand, and is estimated now at being over the 20,000 mark.

Since the foundation's opening in 1999, more than two hundred addicts have entered into the drug recovery program. Thirty-two of them have tested positive for HIV/AIDS while 160 have tested positive for Hepatitis C.

We have to look into the young men and women's eyes and tell them "You have tested positive for HIV/AIDS".

This is the moment when time stops. None of us breathes, their eyes glaze over and their world changes drastically forever in just one second.

After the tragic moment, we wait a day or two to enable our community and others with HIV to encourage and provide them with information and the truth. Calling their parents is the next step and we will ask for a private meeting along with the youths to convey the truth.

These meetings often take several hours as everything must be shared, questions asked and answered and emotions eased. It has always been very emotional for everyone.

After several months, the youths begin to adjust to their new kind of life. A life that blends recovery from drug addiction and learning to live with HIV, as well as helping themselves and others. These months have always been very difficult, complicated and heartrending for both them and their families.

At the center we care, "do the day", stay with the program, stay with the process of recovery from drug addiction, with being alive and not giving in or giving up, stay with reality of HIV, and stay with what is true.

The group of drug abusers or drug addicts is becoming infected with HIV/AIDS and spreading the virus faster than any other group of people. We must also understand that none of the children, who eventually start to use drugs, want to have a life-threatening virus in their bodies. When it happens we must deal with the truth and reality.

Drug addiction and HIV/AIDS don't care about people's status, age, religion, educational background, health or welfare when they infect them.

At the foundation, we know well now that our role as men (and women) who are concerned with addiction and viruses is to stand together and face addiction and HIV/AIDS with courage, understanding and compassion, and to have the willingness to understand what these words truly mean.

Tomorrow, predictably, there will be more youngsters who try drugs, more drug abusers and more addicts. It means more will become infected with HIV/AIDS. What must we do? We will continue do what we have always done, learning to recover from drug addiction, learning to live positively with HIV/AIDS and learning how to help ourselves and others.

"Men Make a Difference: I care - Do you?" If we really care, we must show up and do the day. How about you? Will you help, in your capacity, to help slow down the spread of HIV/AIDS? Be it as a father, a man to a wife, a wife to a man, parents to children, a policymaker, a doctor, a journalist ... whoever we are. Do you care enough to help make a difference?