'Educated people also spread AIDS'

'Educated people also spread AIDS'

JAKARTA (JP): An anti-AIDS campaigner laments the fact that
highly-educated people irresponsibly continue to have unprotected
casual sex with extramarital partners despite knowing they have
contracted Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

Psychologist Nona Pooroe Utomo, drawing on her work with
people with AIDS, said some junior and senior managers of private
companies aged between 30 to 40 years old had contracted AIDS
from casual sexual encounters. Alarmingly, some of them continued
to indiscriminately have unprotected sex with other partners, she
said.

"These people spread AIDS," she said.

Nona rejected the popular perception that sex workers were the
most responsible for spreading AIDS. Quite a number of people who
spread AIDS were young adults, even senior high school students
from average middle class families, she said, quoting a study
conducted in Jakarta and several regions in East Kalimantan.

"They are usually seemingly upright members of their
communities, who maintain jobs, families, friends and religious
activities at churches or mosques, while they continue to have
unprotected sex," she said.

She said the main reason the young adults needed sex was to
"relieve stress." High school students who have casual sex do so
to meet their physical and emotional needs, as well as to gain
material satisfaction from partners who paid them to have sex.

Both groups often had unprotected sex, she said.

Nona also quoted a report from the Cipto Mangunkusumo General
Hospital which said the group of young adults they treated for
AIDS were employees of the private sector, civil servants and
Armed Forces members.

Nona expressed hopes for better cooperation within the medical
community and between government agencies and non-governmental
organizations, in the fight against AIDS and the Human
Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes the deadly syndrome.

She also called for special attention to be paid to the two
groups she mentioned: the young adults, and the professionals.
These two groups were most at risk, and behavioral changes were
definitely called for, she said.

She called on the mass media to help educate people about the
need for responsible sexual behavior. She cited as a good example
the ABC (Abstinence, Be good, use Condoms) motto applied in
Malaysia. (01)