HIV spread in Indonesia uncontrolled: Official
JAKARTA (JP): The spread of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in the country remains unknown after 12 years of efforts to trace people infected with the deadly virus, a health official said on Monday.
The Ministry of Health's acting Director General of Communicable Disease Control and Environmental Health, Umar Fahmi, said that unlike other countries with HIV epidemics such as Thailand, health workers in Indonesia had yet to find an appropriate system to record the number of people who were HIV positive.
"In the absence of a system, we cannot control the spread of HIV. Without data on the exact number of HIV positive people it is difficult for us to check the disease," Umar told The Jakarta Post.
The ministry currently has in place a recording system which relies heavily on findings by non-governmental organizations (NGO) members and data provided by hospitals or community health centers.
"Such a community-based method only allows us to cover the tip of the iceberg, without knowing the real number of HIV positive people," said Umar, who is acting in the position of director general following Achmad Sujudi's appointment as minister of health.
Medical experts have yet to discover a cure for HIV, which leads to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
Umar said the government and the NGOs regularly checked up on HIV positive people and those with AIDS, but that there was no way to supervise health care for unreported people with AIDS or that were HIV positive.
"Thus, although the number of people that are HIV positive or have AIDS discovered in Indonesia are fewer than in Thailand, the actual figure is perhaps the other way around," Umar said.
The ministry found between January and October this year 187 HIV carriers and 38 people who suffered from full-blown AIDS across the country. The figure brings the total number of people infected with HIV to 1,005. Of that number, 265 of them have AIDS.
Umar said he feared that the real number of people that were HIV positive or had AIDS could quintuple the existing government data.
The government was concerned about unsafe sex services for growing numbers of expatriates in remote areas across the country, he said, citing the difficulties in tracing people with AIDS or people that were HIV positive.
"It is easier for us to trace HIV carriers or people with AIDS who live in brothel complexes."
He suggested the government adopt mandatory health insurance for all citizens, saying it was a move applied in developed countries to control the spread of the disease.
"If everybody registered themselves for the program, we would have access to their health records and (be able to) identify all HIV cases," he said. (04)