Aceh/Bandung/Makassar – As people living with HIV/AIDS observed World AIDS Day on Friday with events around the country, there were calls for greater recognition, an end to discrimination and stepped up education efforts.
In Bandung, dozens of people living with AIDS, along with their families and friends, marched across the West Java capital, giving speeches and handing out flowers to passersby.
This was the first public event of its kind in the city and attracted a lot of attention from motorists and pedestrians.
One of the participants, Ginan, said people living with HIV/AIDS wanted to be directly involved in creating government policies for dealing with the disease.
"We appreciate the government's efforts... but unfortunately, we're only involved as mere accessories and have no role in making policies about an issue that we think we understand better than the government," said the 26-year-old man who has been living with the virus for six years.
In addition to the march, the day also was marked by an event called Radio for AIDS, with more than 10 radio stations hosting activities in 20 different parts of Bandung to raise people's awareness of HIV/AIDS.
In Bali, the day was observed with marches and a banner-making competition involving 15 high schools in Denpasar to help raise awareness of the virus among the young.
"HIV/AIDS is spreading quickly in the country, with Bali now third after Papua and Jakarta (in terms of number of cases). That's why we have to target young people.
"Young people are still in a transition period and need proper information... If they get information from the wrong people, they might do things that could endanger them," Elyas Pawelloi, program manager for the organization Yakita Bali, told Antara news agency Friday.
According to official statistics, some 3,000 people have tested positive for HIV in Bali, with 967 of them having developed full-blown AIDS.
The day was solemnly observed in Makassar, South Sulawesi, where the number of people living with HIV/AIDS has increased from around 300 people last year to 1,000 this year. Many of them are between the ages of 15 and 25.
The virus does not discriminate. One of 12 AIDS patients currently being treated at Wahidin Sudirohusodo Hospital in Makassar is a 10-month-old baby girl. The baby, who has been treated at the hospital for the past two weeks, contracted the virus from her HIV-positive mother.
"My baby was born normal and I breast-fed her, just like other mothers because I didn't know that I had the virus. Hopefully, the virus was found in her body because I breast-fed her and once her immunity system starts working it will go away," the 19-year-old woman said Friday.
The young mother learned she was HIV-positive six months ago after her husband, a drug addict, tested positive. "I'm shocked, angry and regretful... but now all I can do is let go. Maybe this is fate," she said.
In Aceh, six people have tested positive in the province since the late 2004 tsunami. Before that disaster, only one person had tested positive in Aceh.