JP/6/6eds1

JP/6/6eds1
A rude awakening

An Indonesian visitor to Paris once noted how she was struck
by the many more elderly faces filling the famous city's trams
and streets, compared to the youthful scene in crowded Jakarta.
This, she noted was in stark contrast to Indonesia, where the
young population, typical of most developing nations, were more
likely to be seen commuting and shopping in the cities and towns.

But imagine a large part of these young people dropping out of
the national census -- dying -- to the extent that the dominant
face of Indonesia shifts to the very young -- meaning much fewer
healthy mothers and fathers to take care of them.

This is what is happening in much of Africa, where governments
face teeming numbers of orphans and dying parents, after losing
so many people in their productive years to HIV/AIDS.

In southern Africa, the report released by the World Health
Organization and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS
says that a quarter of the population in the 15-49 age group have
contracted Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

In this country, it is not uncommon to hear people remark that
African nations are largely poor and are so far away from here,
so they do not affect Indonesia. Current figures show that "only"
1.1 million people in Asia became infected with HIV last year;
but this was more than any previous year.

The latest report on HIV/AIDS ominously warns that Indonesia,
China and India -- a population of some 2.5 billion -- could be
the next countries with an HIV/AIDS explosion. Reports on the
world's scourges tend to be forever dismal, as if life and death
threats are the only things that can wake us up to heed the
concerns they raise. Unfortunately, that is probably true.

One result, however, is that there have been some education
campaigns dealing with HIV and the Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome in recent years, and so we have commemorated each AIDS
Day on Dec. 1 without fail. The obvious danger is to fool
ourselves into complacency. After all, we no longer hear as many
fierce debates on whether promoting condoms is tantamount to
encouraging sin. Promotion of safe sex continues, though with
caution, partly because of the apparent consensus reached by
campaigners and worried elders the world over, that abstinence
should be the first and foremost method of prevention.

But how effective have these campaigns been? Indonesia's
country coordinator for UNAIDS, Jane Wilson, has been quoted as
saying that despite of a number of the government's good
policies, "the implementation of these policies is limited to
less than 10 percent (of those people) with high risk behavior."

The "high risk" group referred to a latest estimate of 160,000
intravenous drug users, currently identified as the fastest
growing group of people contracting HIV/AIDS in Indonesia, of
whom 25 percent are known to already have HIV/AIDS.

If less than 10 percent of the targeted groups benefit from
the education/prevention campaigns, which are geared to combating
both HIV/AIDS and drug abuse, then clearly more concerted efforts
are needed from the government and the public to check the spread
of the virus. The sheer population size of well over 200 million
makes it impossible for any government to take sole
responsibility of changing individual's behavior, let alone
treating all the millions that may contract HIV/AIDS.

Clearer strategies, and a more clear position on the part of
the government in, say, the hazards of unsafe sex, would help to
check potential complacency on the issue. Every AIDS Day is an
opportunity to renew our commitment to fight HIV/AIDS -- and
renew awareness that identification of high risk groups does not
mean everyone else is blissfully safe and hence justified to
stigmatize the "high risk" folks. Indeed there is virtually no
room to remain smug about this issue.

High risk groups have long been considered those who are
"morally loose." Now women are told to be careful if their
husbands travel around for work or other things, possibly
exercising their perceived right to sexual recreation; and girls
are taught that saying no to sex does not necessarily mean never
seeing their boyfriends again. It means a responsibility for
everyone -- at the very least to educate themselves and the
people in their immediate surroundings -- and hopefully avoid
that specter of a country dominated by children, with no one
there to take care of them.