'Take care in punishing AIDS discrimination'

JAKARTA (JP): Experts are concerned that the recent demands for action against hospitals which allegedly discriminate against people with AIDS may backfire.

"In demanding that such hospitals be punished, the public must consider the reasons behind the alleged discrimination," said Chris W. Green, an expert with the Pelita Ilmu Foundation Support Center for AIDS sufferers.

"If the hospitals discriminate because of fear, how do you punish fear? A punishment might make (the punished) even more fearful," Green said during a discussion at the center yesterday.

The discussion revolved around recent charges that a private hospital requested families of patients with AIDS to move them elsewhere and barred the doctor who had been treating them from continuing to do so.

The management of the Medistra hospital has only partially denied the charges, saying that in general there was no discrimination against patients with AIDS.

"There may also be hospital managements which are not fearful or ignorant but which simply do not want to know," said Zumrotin K. Soesilo of the Indonesian Consumer's Organization.

Participants said, however, that they also feared a setback to AIDS awareness campaigns if health personnel at large hospitals rejected people with HIV/AIDS.

Public health advocates and friends of people with AIDS discussed further the possibilities of litigation in cases of discrimination.

Zubairi Djoerban, a medical counselor with the foundation, cited a case in which the family of a deceased AIDS patient contemplated suing a reporter for careless coverage which led to the identification of the patient against his will.

"The person with AIDS and his or her family are in a very weak position," Zubairi said.

Nona Poeroe Utomo, director of the Indonesia AIDS Foundation, said that discrimination against people with AIDS or HIV is a violation of human rights.

She said she had just returned from a conference on ethics on human rights in Copenhagen, at which most participants were HIV- positive.

"Most of them did not want special rights, just basic human rights," Nona said, during a debate on whether special laws are needed to prevent and punish discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS.

Participants agreed that in cases of alleged discrimination against a person with HIV/AIDS, medical counselors or the person's friends and family could report the allegations to any organization involved in AIDS counseling here.

"We must not wait for the government," said public health advocate Harry Purnama.

Meanwhile, an employee of the Jakarta office of the Ministry of Manpower said the office has completed a report on Medistra and filed it with the Ministry of Health.

Officials at the ministry were not available for confirmation yesterday.

The official number of people with HIV/AIDS in Indonesia is now 316, but Zubairi said that according to other estimates 50,000 people in Indonesia are HIV-positive. (anr)

Editorial -- Page 4