Men make a difference

More than two decades after it first began making headlines in the media in the industrialized world, the health condition known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is nowhere near to being defeated. Indeed, as far as Asia is concerned the prevalence of AIDS may well reach its peak only in five to 10 more years, infecting millions of men and women at the peak of their productive age unless some drastic action is urgently taken, UNAIDS, the United Nations agency supervising the fight against AIDS, foresees.

The statistics -- which many experts suspect to be no more than the tip of the iceberg -- paint a grim picture of the situation indeed. For the present, Sub-Saharan Africa still tops the list of worst affected regions in the world. Some 70 percent of the world's 36.1 million people infected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and with full-blown AIDS live in Sub-Saharan Africa.

United Nations health officials, though, warn that Asia could be next in line. Gordon Alexander, who is a senior program advisor for UNAIDS in India, estimates that even though the HIV/AIDS epidemic began in Asia five to 10 years later than in Africa, some 6.4 million people here are already infected with the virus. Of that total, 3.7 million live in India. In five years, Alexander predicts, that figure could double and double again unless urgent measures are taken to contain the virus.

UNAIDS, in a report released last week, reports that the HIV/AIDS is still simmering at low levels in East Asia and the Pacific, where the number of people infected represents a mere 0.07 percent of the region's total population. In the much more populous countries of South and Southeast Asia, however, where 0.56 percent of the people are infected, there is ample room for growth. The sex trade and the illicit use of drugs in this region, according to the report, are extensive, and so are migration and mobility within and across borders. Clearly, there is no room for complacency.

Official data reveal that in this county the number of people infected with HIV/AIDS has risen to alarming levels in the past few years. In the first 10 months of this year alone, the number of people newly infected with the virus has more than doubled compared to the 225 cases recorded throughout all of last year. Between January and October, 478 new cases were recorded -- 314 of HIV and 164 of AIDS. This brings the total number of HIV/AIDS cases to 1,521, with men accounting for about 64 percent of the total. Alarming as those figures are, experts have suggested that they may be but a small percentage of the actual number of cases existing in this country, most of them being unrecorded.

It is in this context that full support must be given to the call made by the chairwoman of the National Family Planning Board, Khofifah Indar Parawansa, on Indonesian men to improve their awareness of the health of their reproductive system. Indonesian men, Khofifah said citing recent survey findings, tend to be unaware of the importance of proper health care and are more reluctant than women to seek medical treatment.

"Based on the fact that men have more sex partners than women, the condition (HIV/AIDS) is likely to infect more males than females. Men are more likely to force themselves upon women and women often have limited capacity to determine when, where and whether sex takes place," she said.

Given all this, we believe it is time for the government to take a more aggressive lead in the fight against AIDS. Credit must be given to all the non-governmental organizations and individuals who have throughout the years dedicated themselves to the fight against the condition, battling ignorance and prejudice in the process. But unless the government makes its skills and resources available to assist those workers in the field, the country could soon find itself confronted with a problem as formidable as that which is facing the Sub-Saharan countries at the moment.