Change your sexual behavior

YOGYAKARTA: If Indonesians do not change their sexual behavior, the state may have to spend Rp 33 trillion (US$15 billion) to control AIDS beginning in the year 2000, an expert warned yesterday.

Dadang Hawari, a medical expert from the Jakarta-based University of Indonesia, said in a seminar that the permissive attitudes of Indonesians towards sex could hasten the spread of AIDS.

"Indonesia's state budget for the year 2000 stands at Rp 95 trillion. That means that the almost one-third of the budget may have to be used to control AIDS," he said.

He said that AIDS continues to spread rapidly throughout Indonesia and other parts of the world.

"Condoms are not entirely safe. In the U.S., AIDS continues spreading despite years of campaigns on safe sex with condoms," he said.

He said the best way to avoid AIDS would be to curb promiscuity.

According to official data until last May, Indonesia had diagnosed 103 people with AIDS and 303 with the HIV, or the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus which causes AIDS. (har/pan)