HIV/AIDS cases in Papua reach alarming level

Nethy Dharma Somba, The Jakarta Post, Jayapura, Papua

Compared to Papua province's population of 2.1 million, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS cases in the province has reached an alarming level with a total of 1,263 people with HIV, including 539 who have contracted the fatal disease.

Chairman of the Commission for Handling of AIDS (KPA) in the province, Constan Karma, expressed his deep concern over the HIV/AIDS cases in the province that almost constitutes 50 percent of the national figure.

"The number of HIV/AIDS cases nationwide is 3,782, with 1,263 cases in Papua," he said here on Monday.

He said the HIV/AIDS cases was an iceberg phenomenon, indicating that "we will likely find one case among 100 people, and if no action is taken, we fear the number of people with HIV/AIDS will reach 126,000 in the next decade."

Constan, also the province's deputy governor, said that the HIV prevalence is alarming because there are 24.13 HIV/AIDS cases for every 100,000 people.

"At the national level, only 0.6 cases are found for every 100,000 people," he said, citing the country's population at 206.2 million.

Of the 1,263 cases, 527 are found in Merauke regency, 308 in Timika regency and 149 in Sorong regency.

Constan said the virus was transferred via unprotected sex, and those with HIV/AIDS were between the ages of 20 and 39.

Local health officer Bagus Sukaswara said the fatal disease, which was detected for the first time ten years ago in Merauke, has claimed 350 lives, averaging 35 deaths annually.

He said the disease was first brought to the province by Thai fishermen and spread through sex workers easily found in coastal transmigrant resettlement areas in Merauke.

KPA Chairman Farid W. Hussain blamed the sexual behavior among adults and sharing needles among drug abusers on the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS in the country.

Besides launching a safe sex campaign, the government should strictly enforce the law to minimize the spread of HIV/AIDS, he said.

Family Health International Director Steven Wignall called on the Indonesian people to avoid casual unprotected sex and to use condoms when having sex with different partners.

Constan also called upon religious and tribal leaders to persuade locals to avoid casual sex to minimize the number of HIV/AIDS cases in the future.

"In addition, the government is preparing a bylaw requiring the use of condoms in red-light districts in the province," he said.

At the end of March, there were 2,556 cases of HIV and 1,086 cases of AIDS in Indonesia. However, the figures might not be a true indication of the actual amount of patients as many cases go unreported. Some estimates suggest that there were 90,000 to 130,000 people who are HIV-positive in 2002.

The director general of Communicable Disease Control, Haikin Rachmat, said recently that new infections had almost doubled over the past two years.

Unprotected sex accounts for 73 percent of all cases of HIV in Indonesia, followed by sharing needles at 24 percent.

The latest report on the AIDS epidemic from the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said injecting drugs was a growing phenomenon in urban areas in Indonesia because of recent social and economic upheavals.