Experts call for compulsory HIV tests for migrant workers

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Demography experts have called on the government to introduce compulsory anti-HIV/AIDS tests for migrant workers as a way to prevent the rapid spread of the deadly virus.

Graeme Hugo, an expert from Australia's University of Adelaide, who has conducted research on HIV/AIDS in Indonesia, said on Thursday such compulsory tests would help health authorities here find the exact number of virus-infected people.

He said several countries had obliged arriving overseas workers to take compulsory HIV tests.

"It will be wise to run HIV testing for migrant workers to obtain better figures on the HIV/AIDS spread," Hugo told a discussion, during which he presented the results of his research.

He said the high mobility of nomadic workers, who often changed sexual partners, had contributed to the vast spread of HIV/AIDS.

Hugo said the workers were separated from their spouses, were free from traditional constraints on sex and inevitably lived near red-light districts which made them prone to the virus.

He said there were some places that presented migrant workers with greater risks of HIV and AIDS infection.

The "hotspots" included isolated working places, such as ports and harbors, mining sites and plantations, forest industries, remote construction sites and border areas, he added.

"The high level of HIV infection is not necessarily related to population mobility, but it is more contributed to by the type of people movement and their sexual behavior," Hugo said.

Diah Widyarti, a researcher at the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, underlined the need for the government to make HIV tests compulsory for migrant workers.

She said Hugo's study should be a wake-up call for the government to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases in connection with the workers' mobility.

"We need more similar studies and reliable documentation. We should intensify the dissemination of information about this matter to improve the workers' awareness since we cannot conduct compulsory HIV tests," she said.

Hugo said he recorded a significant rise of the temporary labor migration within the country in the last decade, in which people moved to isolated working sites.

"This study shows a pattern of many cases, in which mobile people are more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behavior with commercial sex workers, many of them not using condoms," he said.

Although there was no comprehensive research yet on the number of temporary workers with HIV/AIDS, Hugo urged the government to take action to curb the likely rapid spread of the virus due to its high prevalence in Indonesia.

According to official data released by the government last year, only 1,559 cases of HIV/AIDS were so far recorded. But activists said the number of Indonesians infected by the lethal virus reached between 80,000 and 120,000.

Meanwhile, Sri Moertaningsih Adioetomo of Jakarta's University of Indonesia, said one quarter of the 210 million Indonesian people traveled to make a living.

All of them were unskilled workers who were prone to contracting HIVAIDS, she added. "They become street children, scavengers and prostitutes and are more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS."