Hospitals urged to keep accepting AIDS patients

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Medical Association has urged hospitals to keep their doors wide open to people with AIDS, following a report that one of the association's members was asked to stop treating AIDS patients at a private hospital in Jakarta.

Association Chairman Azrul Azwar said on Saturday that the management of the private hospital in question had gone as far as to bar the doctor from treating other patients at the hospital.

Azrul said that all doctors have a duty to treat patients with the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), as well as those who have contracted the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which leads to AIDS.

There should be no discrimination against AIDS patients on the part of hospitals, he said, citing a government regulation which requires all hospitals to equip themselves with facilities for treating AIDS patients.

Azrul made the statement during a press conference held to announce the association's plan to hold a seminar to provide information about AIDS to its members.

He said there was a need for a more professional relationship between doctors and the managements of the hospitals in and for whom they practice.

This is in the interests of doctors, he said, because only then can they carry out their social function of serving patients, he said.

Azrul said he had also asked colleagues at the University of Indonesia's School of Law to draft agreements to regulate the working relationships between doctors and hospital managements.

Samsuridjal, an association member who specializes in AIDS, said that the likelihood of doctors or paramedics contracting the disease from infected patients was "very small."

"The chances of a paramedic being accidentally stabbed by a syringe that has been used on a HIV-positive patient is only 5/1000," he said.

An AIDS scare, such as was seen in the United States and Europe in the 1980s, is only now beginning to occur in Indonesia, as public awareness of the growing number of people who have the disease or have tested HIV-positive increases.

The number of people who have tested HIV-positive in Indonesia remains less than 400. However, as Samsuridjal pointed out on Saturday, the actual number is likely to be 100 times that figure, given that blood testing has been limited to date.

Samsuridjal said that five AIDS patients in Indonesia died in July.

He said that, in his personal observation, the practice of rejection of AIDS patients by hospitals is a rare occurrence in Indonesia. He added that almost all Indonesian hospitals have treated AIDS patients.

Regarding the upcoming seminar, Azrul said that it is chiefly intended for general practitioners and is aimed helping them to stay abreast of the latest developments in both the spread of AIDS, treatments and prevention strategies.

Citing a recent survey conducted by the School of Medicine of the University of Indonesia, Azrul conceded that many Indonesian doctors, particularly those posted in community health centers across the nation, do not know enough about AIDS.

He said clinical approaches were appropriate in the case of patients with a high risk of death, but added that, where prevalence is high, there also needs to be a community approach to the disease.

"But the best way of dealing with the problem is through counseling for the patient and his or her family," he said.(05)