'Hospitals must be prepared for AIDS'
JAKARTA (JP): Hospitals should train their personnel and equip themselves to admit AIDS patients because the number of people infected by the deadly disease is rapidly increasing, an expert said yesterday.
Currently Indonesia has up to 50,000 carriers of Human Immuno- deficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, said Zubairi Djoerban, an executive from the study group on AIDS at Jakarta's Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital.
The number is expected to reach at least 350,000 by the year 2000, he said. "Without preventive efforts, the figure could reach 2.5 million," Zubairi told The Jakarta Post.
If hospital staff do not immediately prepare themselves, he said, there could be many more patients wrongly diagnosed and treated for other symptoms, he said.
"At the Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, we have already treated several patients with tuberculosis who did not recover as expected. Then careful examinations showed that they had HIV," said Zubairi.
Zubairi was responding to comments that Samsi Jacobalis, the president of the Indonesian Hospital Association (PERSI) made during a talk show on the government-owned radio station Radio Republik Indonesia.
AIDS-related issues have become the center of much attention following reports of a private hospital in Jakarta, Medistra, discriminating against patients with AIDS. It was reported that the management had barred a doctor from treating them.
Samsi pointed out that despite a ministerial ruling on a national strategy on AIDS prevention, which states that hospitals must not discriminate against patients with HIV/AIDS, it will take time to implement the rule for psychological reasons.
He cited the stigma attached to AIDS as a "dirty disease." More campaigns and programs are needed to reduce this constraint, Samsi said.
Zubairi said he agreed with PERSI's suggestion that if a hospital feels it is not yet ready to treat such patients, it should at least treat them minimally before referring them to hospitals with trained staff and adequate equipment.
"However it must be clear (among hospital management) when they are ready to receive such patients," Zubairi said.
"This shouldn't take five years. Once there is commitment a training program can be initiated," he said. "Expensive, special facilities are not urgent," he added.
Zubairi said that hospital managements also do not have to worry about acquiring a "bad image" if people know that patients with HIV/AIDS are being treated at their hospitals.
"Several hospitals in Jakarta have treated AIDS/HIV-positive patients, and these hospitals still have lots of patients," he said.
The RRI talk show ended in an agreement on the need for cooperation between the Indonesian Hospital Association and the Cipto Mangunkusumo study group on AIDS as well as for more special training for hospital management and staff. (anr)