Doctors urge for better treatment of HIV patients

JAKARTA (JP): Doctors here urged their fellow medical colleagues to cease discriminatory treatment of patients identified as being drug addicts or those infected with HIV/AIDS virus.

Doctors during a symposium here on Wednesday lamented that many addicts or patients with the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) were often being treated as second-class patients, with medical practitioners often reluctant to treat these stigmatized patients or just simply turning them away.

They pointed out that the reception given to patients facing these "maladies" was often different to that given to those with a simple toothache.

Immunologist Samsuridjal Djauzi who practices at state-run Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital said medical practitioners must learn to adjust to the challenges they face.

"Doctors are not supposed to stop learning ... Their skills should progress in line with the problems found in society," he said.

Samsuridjal later told journalists that many of his colleagues even believed that these patients "deserved" their fate as a consequence of their chosen lifestyle, while adding that "some were afraid of the risk of being infected with HIV/AIDS."

Physician Zubairi Djoerban, who was a speaker in the symposium held by the Jakarta-chapter of the Indonesian Internists Association (PAPDI-JAYA), said that awareness about handling such cases should be introduced in the curriculum for medical students.

Speakers in the symposium revealed there were clear signs that the number of intravenous drug users was rising, many of whom swap unsterile syringes thereby exposing themselves to transmutable Hepatitis C virus and HIV.

Internist Nurul Akbar revealed that a study in 1999 showed that 83 percent of 185 patients in two drug rehabilitation programs here were intravenous drugs users, with two out of every three infected with Hepatitis C.

Samsuridjal added that 78 percent of his HIV patients were drug users who became infected through shared syringes.

The doctors agreed that the most effective way to curb the spread of such infectious diseases in the short term was by teaching drug users to use sterile syringes or by distributing sterile ones.

Samsuridjal also urged the government to provide hospitals or even health centers in remote area with medicines and first aid to help drug addicts that suffered from a drug overdose, their number one killer.(bby)