The AIDS time bomb
The latest warning about the global AIDS menace has failed to resonate in Indonesia. To most people in this country, any mention of Barcelona will conjure up the image of the awesome Spanish football (soccer) club and its World Cup hero, Rivaldo. Very few people would recall that the Catalan city just hosted the largest ever international conference on the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), which closed on Friday.
The message about the threat of AIDS and its related human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and about the need for a concerted global effort to counter it, failed to generate even the slightest public interest in this country. The large media outlets, whose responsibility it is to help raise public awareness, barely gave the Barcelona conference a mention, although many would give it front page treatment if "Barca" sold Rivaldo to another football club.
The treatment of the Barcelona conference by the mainstream media in this country however is symptomatic of the nation's indifference towards the HIV/AIDS issue. Indonesia seems to be completely insulated from all the debates and all the decisions that took place in Barcelona.
But to those who'd rather ignore the message from Barcelona, here is the really bad news: Indonesia is not insulated, or even immune, from the HIV/AIDS problem. Far from it. In fact, going by the statements of some of the participants at the conference, and by the report published by the United Nations' AIDS agency ahead of the meeting, Indonesia could face a problem of catastrophic proportions unless we take immediate action.
And that means acting now before it is too late.
Going by the indifferent attitudes found nationwide, the nation still does not seem to have realized the havoc that AIDS could inflict on them.
We recall it took a while to convince the government that the number of people recorded with HIV/AIDS concealed the real figure because many cases went undetected. So, it was a significant progress that the government was willing to admit to a more realistic figure of 120,000 HIV/AIDS estimated cases nationwide.
But after having made that leap of recognizing the potential of the problem, complacency seems to have sneaked back in. What the government fails to recognize is that the number of people with HIV/AIDS is multiplying all the time, especially in the absence of any real concerted effort to stop the spread.
Many non-governmental organizations, because they are working in the field, know better about the gravity of the problem. They are warning that the infection rate is rising, and it is rising fast, so much so that one activist describes it as "the fastest growing industry" in Indonesia. One single glance at the graphic of the HIV/AIDS infection rate should be sufficient to raise the alarm bells. The rate is rising exponentially.
The experience of Thailand in the 1980s and present-day Africa should teach us against complacency; the chief lesson being that the problem could spin out of control once it reaches a certain critical mass. The Thai experience in bringing the problem under control could also be used in Indonesia later, but first and foremost Indonesia must come to terms with the problem.
Even if the HIV/AIDS infection rate in Indonesia does not reach anywhere near the 30 percent to 40 percent of the adult population found in many African countries, we would be gravely mistaken to dismiss the gravity of the problem. A 1 percent infection rate of the population in Indonesia translates to 2.1 million people, and a 2 percent to 4.2 million. This simple math is simply mind numbing. These numbers would also translate into rupiah (or dollars) for the cost of medicine, lost productivity at work and other social impacts. The cost would be just horribly enormous.
Back in March, the government seemed to make a good move when it launched the concerted "multisectoral" campaign to contain the AIDS menace. But nothing has been seen or heard about the campaign since its ceremonial launching by no less than President Megawati Soekarnoputri.
Many people who are infected with HIV/AIDS, or the NGO activists helping them, have hardly heard of the government's widely touted campaign since then. Because various government agencies are supposed to be involved in the campaign, few seem to be willing to take the responsibility, and probably even fewer to allocate funds out of their scarce budgets to the AIDS campaign.
One good piece of news we learned during the past week is that some of those responsible for the campaign, apparently under the office of the Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare, were in Barcelona for the AIDS conference. Let's hope they come back with more than the latest news about Barca and Rivaldo.
Someone will have to deliver the tough message about AIDS/HIV to wake this nation up from its long slumber. There is still time to defuse the AIDS time bomb. But we cannot wait too long for time is running out fast.