Jakarta – Indonesia faces a growing AIDS problem – particularly among drug users and prostitutes – while a recent survey shows two percent of the Papua population infected with HIV, the World Health Organisation said on Saturday.
The sprawling, developing nation of 220 million people also faces constraints and lack of resources to cope with the problem, Bjorn Melgaard of the WHO said at the release of the report.
"Indonesia has one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in Asia. Although the HIV prevalence among adults is still generally low, it has reached high levels among specific populations like injecting drug users and sex workers," the report said.
Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation but many of its citizens have a liberal attitude toward sex and prostitution is a thriving part of the economy in many areas. Drug usage has also been growing, police say.
The WHO report highlighted a growing concern over HIV cases in the remote eastern area of Papua, where it said a recent survey showed that prevalence of HIV in the general population was 20 times the national average and two percent were infected with HIV.
The report said there was "recent evidence of a generalised epidemic" in Papua and cited the undeveloped health care system and a lack of resources to cope with the problem.
Papua, with a population of two million occupying a land area almost as large as Iraq, has around 300 indigenous tribes, some still living in virtually Stone Age conditions, with different sets of languages and traditions.
The Southeast Asian country overall faced constraints dealing with the problem ranging from weak preventative programmes among high risk groups, blood safety issues and poor quality of clinical care, Melgaard said.
The report did not provide estimates on cases in Indonesia, but Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari warned in November that the country could see half a million HIV cases by 2010, and double that if preventive steps are not taken.
At that time, estimates put the number of cases in a range of 169,000-216,000 in Indonesia although only about 7,000 full-blown AIDS cases had been reported. That represents an overall estimated HIV infection rate of about 0.1 percent of the population.