Governor wants public support for anti-AIDS campaign

JAKARTA (JP): Governor Surjadi Soedirdja wants Jakartans to work hand in hand with city officials in the state-sponsored drive to prevent the spread of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

"Based on the latest data from the Ministry of Health, 74 of the 214 people suffering from AIDS in the country are Jakartans," Surjadi said.

Surjadi was speaking at the opening of a one-day workshop on AIDS prevention at City Hall yesterday. The topic of the workshop was AIDS and Family, echoing the theme of this year's World AIDS Day.

The governor warned that if the Human Immunodeficiency Virus which causes the syndrome is not properly checked, the disease will spread rapidly, with its impact felt not only in health circles, but in the socio-economic and political sectors as well.

After opening the seminar, the governor went into a room at City Hall to test the AIDS hot-line telephone number, 3518102, established by the municipal administration. The hot-line service, manned by officials from the City Health Office, can be contacted by residents seeking information about HIV or AIDS related matters from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each work day.

"The service is given for free," an official said.

Soenarjudardji, the chairman of the Jakarta chapter joint committee for AIDS prevention, in contrast to Surjadi's figures, said there were 72 people being treated in Jakarta's hospitals for AIDS.

"Sixty of them are from Jakarta, six from West Java and one from Bali," Soenarjudardji said.

He would not reveal where the five other victims come from.

Foreigners

Soenarjudardji said 75 percent or 54 of the victims are Indonesians and 21 percent or 15 are foreigners.

"We do not know the nationalities of three others yet," he said.

Sixty-six percent of the HIV positive people are males between 21 and 40 years of age.

Soenarjudardji said 48 percent of the registered HIV carriers in the city are homosexuals and 15 percent are heterosexuals who picked the virus up through sexual contacts.

Joko Widodo, the chairman of the special group discussion on AIDS at the Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital (RSCM), said most of the 72 patients were infected by the disease when they were abroad.

RSCM is the one and only hospital in the country which is authorized to conduct the Western-Blot test, a medical checkup aimed specifically at detecting infection by HIV.

The first AIDS case in the city was discovered in the mid 1980s.

"The incidence of the disease has been increasing rapidly ever since," Soenarjudardji said.

Djumhana S., the director for the eradication of contagious disease at the Ministry of Health, a key speaker at the workshop, said that the first AIDS case in Jakarta was actually found in a child in 1986, not in 1987 as claimed by many quarters.

But this case was not reported for quite a long time, Djumhana added. (arf)