'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)