Caring can help to make a difference

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?