Dessy Sagita & Kennial Caroline Laia – A senior government health official has sought to distance himself from the controversy over a condom promotion campaign following opposition from conservatives across the country.
"We would like to emphasize the campaign is not ours and the Health Ministry did not allocate a special budget for the program," Tjandra Yoga Aditama, the ministry's director general for disease control and environmental health, said in Jakarta on Wednesday.
He was referring to the National Condom Week campaign, held during the first week in December each year to promote safe sex as part of a wider HIV/AIDS awareness campaign.
The program came under fire this week after a bus employed for the campaign was accused of being used to distribute condoms for free outside Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.
National Condom Week, organized by DKT, an international HIV/AIDS prevention organization, and the National AIDS Commission (KPAN), has sparked controversy every year since its outset in 2007.
The campaign is opposed by conservatives and religious leaders who say promoting condom use encourages sexual promiscuity.
"On Monday we had a meeting with DKT and the KPAN and we asked DKT to stop the National Condom Week bus campaign... to prevent unnecessary controversy," Tjandra said.
KPAN secretary Kemal Siregar echoed Tjandra's statement about the halting of the campaign bus, which had been expected to operate until Saturday. "We just want to calm everything down and prevent further controversy," he said.
Kemal said that despite the setback, the KPAN would continue its work in changing public attitudes toward condom use.
The opposition to the National Condom Week bus began on the Internet, with several social media users accusing DKT of handing out free condoms.
DKT responded immediately to the protests, saying the bus was sent to disseminate information about HIV/AIDS in Jakarta and not Yogyakarta, and that no distribution of condoms took place.
Kemal said programs to distribute condoms for free were only targeted in areas with high rates of prostitution, including red-light districts and around bus terminals and seaports.
The Health Ministry announced last year that it would distribute 10 million free condoms to commercial sex workers who would otherwise not be able to afford them.
The Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) warned that Indonesia would see 76,000 new HIV cases each year if it did not come up with a strategy to overcome the problem.
Health Minister Nafsiah Mboi previously said that up to eight million men regularly had sex with commercial sex workers, but only 3 percent of them claimed to regularly use condoms.
The rate of condom use among such men is the lowest compared to other high-risk groups, which include shared needle users and homosexuals. This reckless behavior has resulted in a growing number of housewives getting infected with HIV.