Students to establish anti-AIDS foundation
JAKARTA (JP): Senior high school students in the city plan to establish a forum for exchanging ideas about means of preventing the spread of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
The plan was agreed upon on Wednesday night during a discussion sponsored by the Pelita Ilmu Foundation (YPI), which is involved in the fight against AIDS.
The discussion featured health experts Dadang Hawari, Noorwati and Thoyib Muharam, who talked about reproductive health and the prevention of AIDS.
"The forum will be named 'Students Care about AIDS'," YPI activist Usep Solehudin told The Jakarta Post yesterday.
YPI has provided training to 517 students from 248 senior high schools throughout the city and 160 teachers regarding AIDS prevention. They, in turn, have passed on their knowledge about AIDS and the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) to their colleagues, Usep said.
Providing information about the spread of AIDS and reproductive health generally to young people was the foundation's main concern, he added.
"Students are encouraged to share their opinions about sex and reproduction, topics which parents and teachers generally still consider taboo," he said.
The spread of HIV has become a matter of national concern in Indonesia. The government has formed a special board in charge of coordinating efforts to curb the spread of the incurable disease.
Official data released by the Ministry of Health shows that 75 Indonesians have full-blown AIDS and at least 234 others have tested positive for HIV. Forty-four of the AIDS cases and 57 of the HIV cases were discovered in Jakarta.
The data also shows that 50 percent of people with AIDS/HIV are aged between 20 and 29 years.
HIV, which first made headlines in 1980, is commonly transmitted through the exchange of bodily fluids, the sharing of syringes and blood transfusions.
"All over the world, three people catch HIV every minute," said Dadang Hawari, a health expert from the University of Indonesia, Jakarta.
Many young people are ignorant about AIDS and yet many of them have sexual relations before they are married, Thoyib Muharam said.
He said that a recent survey he had conducted showed that most customers of brothels were young people. "There is every reason for the anti-AIDS campaign to target young people," he added.
Meanwhile, Hawari insisted that the only way to prevent HIV/AIDS was the practice of safe sex and having only one sexual partner.
He said that using condoms could not, by itself, guarantee that someone would not be infected with HIV. "The healthy, safe and responsible way to have sex is to get married and have one steady partner, instead of wearing condoms," he said. (29)