Man with AIDS in hiding

KUPANG, East Nusa Tenggara: A man with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has gone into hiding in a forest to avoid the health authorities and the police, who he fears will isolate him from the rest of the world, his wife says.

Agnes Bura said her husband Silvister Peka has told her he contracted the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus this year while he was working on a plantation in Sabah, Malaysia, where he admitted to sleeping with prostitutes.

She said her husband was deported from Sabah after a local Malaysian hospital tested him for the virus. The hospital's diagnosis was later confirmed by a hospital in Nunukan, East Kalimantan.

Silvister knew that the Nunukan hospital had notified health authorities in Flores of his planned arrival so that he could be monitored. But he managed to evade them and returned home to East Andora Island safely.

Agnes said the authorities started tracking him down after she came to a Kupang hospital for a check-up.

"He has been hiding in coffee plantations in East Adonara because he is afraid that the health authorities and the police will catch him," she told The Jakarta Post. (yac)