Condoms alone will not stop AIDS, minister says

Condoms alone will not stop AIDS, minister says

JAKARTA (JP): Condoms alone won't stop the spread of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS); the key is "proper behavior", Minister of Health Sujudi said yesterday.

The trick is simply to avoid sexually promiscuity and to "remember that there is a family waiting back home," Sujudi said during a one-day seminar entitled "AIDS and the family."

"Condom campaigns should only be conducted at places where people have a high risk of getting HIV or AIDS," he said.

If people lived more strictly by their religion and those who lead a promiscuous life repented, the spread of AIDS could be reduced, he said.

The one-day seminar yesterday was organized by the Usaha Mulia Abadi Foundation, a private organization under the Jakarta administration which is active in various social causes, including the alleviation of poverty, care for orphans and the prevention of AIDS.

Dadang Hawari, a doctor who commented on the issue from a religious point of view, told the seminar that AIDS was not only a matter of health or medical science, but more a matter of "the behavior of people which has gone beyond the limits."

Sujudi stressed that AIDS-prevention methods, campaigns and seminars in Indonesia did not necessarily have to imitate "Western" methods. "Other countries have a different culture, background, religion and behavior from us."

Instead, Indonesia could take a "family approach" in preventing the further spread of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), he said.

"Indonesia's success in population control through its family planning program has been acknowledged internationally. I think it would be more effective if Indonesia took a family approach in the prevention of AIDS/HIV transmission as well," the minister said.

Sujudi said that the general assumption in calculating the number of people with HIV/AIDS was that for every reported AIDS case, there were a further 1,000 HIV-positive cases and that for every reported HIV case, there might be 100 undetected HIV- positive cases.

As of last month, 70 people in Indonesia tested positive for the AIDS, while 218 people tested positive for HIV. Using the minister's formula, this means that the actual number of people with AIDS may reach 70,000 and those declared HIV positive 21,800, totaling to 91,800 people with HIV or AIDS.

This figure, Sujudi said, might increase to more than 300,000 people with HIV by 1996 and to between 600,000 and 2.5 million by the year 2000 if there were no special intervention.

"If the government and the people get together to seriously prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, the number of cases could be reduced to about 30 percent of the estimated figures," he said.

The first AIDS case in Indonesia was reported in 1987 in Bali. However, according to reports of non-government organizations, the first AIDS case was detected in the country as early as 1985.

Sujudi said the first cases of HIV/AIDS in Indonesia were found among homosexuals and later expanded to "people with high risk" such as drug addicts using shared syringes, prostitutes and their customers.

He said the main mode of HIV/AIDS transmission in Indonesia was through sexual contact. Fifty-eight percent of transmission is through heterosexual intercourse, while 25 percent was through homosexual or bisexual contact. "Up to 91 percent of the people with HIV/AIDS are of reproductive age, between 15 and 49 years old."

The spread of HIV/AIDS, he said, would also have economic consequences which might add up to $29.2 billion by the year 2000 if preventive steps were not taken.(pwn)