'Take care in punishing AIDS discrimination'
'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