Teach teenagers use condoms, AIDS experts say
JAKARTA (JP): Experts greeted today's International AIDS Day with calls on the weekend for sex education -- including how to use condoms -- to curb the spread of the deadly disease among preteens and teenagers.
Psychologist Sarlito Wirawan Sarwono and an activist from the Indonesia AIDS Foundation, Ninuk Widyantoro, agreed that teenagers should be taught in school not only about reproductive health and pregnancy but also how to use condoms.
Sarlito stressed that the religious approach was no longer enough to prevent youngsters from becoming sexually active.
"Religion is no longer their life's guidance. Talking about religion to them is nonsense. They definitely have to know how to use condoms rather than become infected with HIV/AIDS," he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
Indonesian Moslems, who account for a majority of the nation's 200 million people, are wary about the campaign to promote condoms as a way of curbing the spread of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Human Immunodeficiency Virus -- which causes the as yet incurable disease.
Ulemas have outright rejected what they call "condomization", saying it was tantamount to promoting promiscuity.
Sarlito, who has been campaigning for sex education for teenagers since the 1980s, said religious teaching could only be applied to devout followers.
"Now there are many preteens who sleep with middle-aged men," he said. "To the students who are already (morally) 'upright', religion is effective ... as a preventive measure.
"But girls who have engaged (in premarital sex), we absolutely cannot approach them through religion," he said.
Sarlito, dean of the University of Indonesia's School of Psychology, acknowledged that Indonesia found it difficult to incorporate sex education in the school curriculum, given the differences in values among ethnic groups.
He suggested that lessons on safe sex be included in the school's extracurricular activities instead.
Sarlito led a discussion on AIDS which was held Saturday by the Ministry of Education and Culture to commemorate International AIDS Day.
This year, the world-wide event is titled Children Living in a World with AIDS.
An expert from the Ministry of Health, Dr. Broto Wasisto, said during his presentation at Saturday's symposium that changing people's sexual behavior through education could prevent HIV/AIDS infection among people, particularly teenagers.
Broto, who is chairman of the National Commission on AIDS Prevention's working group, cited how anti-AIDS campaigns in U.S. schools did not reduce the number of students having unsafe sex.
"The use of condoms increased when sex education and the campaign were followed by discussions on the impact of unsafe sexual relationships, including pregnancy and venereal diseases," he said.
The first reported AIDS case in Indonesia was in Bali in 1987.
According to last month's health ministry statistics, 599 people have been infected with HIV and 152 of them have full- blown AIDS.
Of the 599 cases, 528 people (88 percent) are aged between 15 and 49 and 499 (83 percent) were infected through sexual contact. (09)