Hospitals urged to keep accepting AIDS patients

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)