First HIV positive baby in RI reported

JAKARTA (JP): The first baby born with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in Indonesia has been reported, a government official announced yesterday.

The baby was one of the 11 people added Wednesday to the government's list of people with HIV or AIDS, which now stands at 449.

Abdul Manaf, head of the Ministry of Health's Directorate of Direct Communicable Disease Control, refused to identify the baby yesterday. But he did say the baby was "less than one year old".

"It's likely that the baby contracted the virus from its mother," he told The Jakarta Post. He said the baby would have another medical test when aged 18 months.

Health authorities here have recorded that five babies have been born from mothers with HIV. One of them, a healthy baby boy, was born at the Sanglah hospital in Denpasar, Bali, in August.

The other babies are from Bojonegoro and Malang in East Java, from Jayapura in Irian Jaya and from Jakarta. None of the five newborn babies have been reported as contracting HIV.

Samsuridjal Djauzi, a medical adviser of the Pelita Ilmu Foundation on Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), said separately that babies could contract the virus during delivery because they had direct contact with their mothers' blood and amniotic fluid.

He added that breast-feeding also increased the risk of infection, though it was not as high as during delivery.

The doctor said that babies infected with HIV may die sooner than HIV-positive adults. The incubation period among adults is between five and 10 years, whereas babies can have full-blown AIDS within a year.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that until January this year there were 5.5 million HIV-positive children in the world: 2.3 million of them have developed AIDS.

Of the 11 new cases in Indonesia, eight are HIV-positive and three have AIDS.

Of the eight people who are HIV-positive, four are residents of Jakarta, two are residents of East Java, one is a resident of Central Java and one lives in East Nusa Tenggara. This is the first time HIV has been recorded in East Nusa Tenggara.

Three of the latest people with AIDS live in Jakarta, and there is one foreigner among the 11.

In Indonesia, there are 108 people who have been registered as having full-blown AIDS: 66 of them have died. There are 341 people who are HIV positive.

In Jakarta 154 people have HIV or AIDS, in Irian Jaya there are 111, in Riau there are 44, Bali and East Java each have 35 and South Sumatra has 23 cases.

Experts predict that if AIDS is not properly controlled, up to 2.5 million people here could be infected by the year 2000, which means an estimated 150 people contracting it everyday. (ste)