2010, when access to all kinds of freedom is open, by this I mean freedom in living how you want to, freedom to have knowledge on anything cross your mind, and freedom to question, there are still “unreachable corners” where taboo subjects left untouched. One among those subjects that becomes our concern as its awareness day is approaching is HIV/AIDS.
HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus, virus that attacks human immune system which makes human “unprotected”. HIV causes AIDS by damaging the immune system cells until the immune system can no longer fight off other infections that it would usually be able to prevent. It takes around ten years on average for someone with HIV to develop AIDS.
There are various ways a person can get infected by HIV: a) Unprotected sexual intercourse with an infected person, b) Contact with an infected person’s blood (in sufficient number of blood), c) Blood transfusion, d) Injected drugs, e) From mother to child during pregnancy, delivering, and breastfeeding. If we made a poll on words related to HIV/AIDS the top answer would be “sex” and why HIV/AIDS is not well-discussed because it is always linked to sex.
Lets for a moment focus on young people and effort to educate them about HIV/AIDS, the freedom to access media where the attack of thousands new things occur to these minors is overwhelming. Indonesian history has not closed on those celebrities adultery which are accessible by these minors through media. They are easy victims as they are simply curious about sex and their sexuality. This could be a good thing if it is balanced with the proper knowledge of what sex is, what consequences it has, why and when is the right time to have sex. Applied to many people, not merely to young people, that perception of sex intercourse’s consequence is merely pregnancy and in relation to that condom was invented to prevent pregnancy only. This is a crack that should be covered by education.
Little that I knew how big the roles of HIV/AIDS institutions/organizations were before I took part in their field work. Working for HIV/AIDS NGO named LARAS gave me a chance to directly see how far people’s comprehension on HIV/AIDS and its opportunistic infections were and the effort of outreach workers to educate people. Come to surface layers and layers of society we need to reach, it seems like years of work through media such as TV and radio commercials, leaflets etc are not enough.
Not in order, on one of the layers there are students and young people who are delicate on this subject, parents tend to think it is unnecessary if not taboo for them to get such knowledge. But on the other hand better understanding of what HIV/AIDS is, what the transmission methods are and how to prevent the transmission. In parallel with the transmission methods, the prevention methods are by having safe sex (condoms) and loyal to your partner, not sharing needles when using injected drugs and be aware of transfused blood. The point of HIV/AIDS education is not to promote sex or injected drugs but to give them better understanding of one action that can lead people to life destruction. Related to the effort to prevent HIV transmission through injected drugs, some non-governmental organizations support drug addicts with syringes so they do not have to share the needles and transmit HIV. Indonesian government still opposes this prevention idea since it is seen as a support to drug using. It is depends on the point of view on this matter, on one side the non-governmental organizations put the HIV harm reduction first while the government still focuses on the harm of drug using. This leaves homework for Indonesian government and non-governmental organizations to sit and discuss a way out.
The second layer I will mention is the society, in here education is supposed to kill the stigmas on people living with HIV/AIDS. The perception of society about people living with HIV/AIDS as people living the punishment for their sins has to be changed, there are lots of innocent people got infected by HIV/AIDS such as babies who are infected from their mothers and wives who are infected because their husbands do not live by safe sex. Hopefully by knowing how HIV transmitted would help them understand this and embrace people living with HIV/AIDS. More important to promote awareness society also has to be introduced to HIV test called Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) to have control on their HIV status because we never know how HIV might infect us. Among the spreading method, people have little understanding of possibility of being infected through blood transfusion, in this case besides giving more education to the society so they can be selective on the blood transfusion, hospitals and PMI also have be a good filter of healthy blood for transfusion. With full awareness hopefully the society can work hand in hand, also with government, to support harm reduction of HIV/AIDS.
The third layer is sex workers and injected drug users where they are seen as the “sources” of the spread of HIV. A very strong understanding is obliged to be provided to sex workers and injected drug users about HIV/AIDS and how they can protect themselves. Such education is crucial and yet often abandoned seeing these people start to work as sex workers and use drugs at far too young at age, the lack of education and attention from the family hold important role why they made this mistake at the first place. In my experience with LARAS, where we dealt more with sex workers, most of the girls were forced or tricked into human trafficking. Once again the lack of education and financial difficulties force them to do whatever job offered to them. In some cases that we found in sex worker complex in Bontang, girls from other islands were promised to work on cafes or restaurants but as they arrived in East Kalimantan they were put into situation where they had to work as sex worker and no other option as they had to pay for their fares from their hometown to East Kalimantan. Broader look on my work with LARAS, LARAS is a non-governmental organization supported by a Dutch organization named Mainline. LARAS commits to educate and empower sex workers to protect themselves which hopefully will lead to reduce of HIV/AIDS spread. Supported by numbers of outreach workers, LARAS gives counseling to sex workers and promote the importance of using condom. By using of condom these girls are given mentality that they have power and options to decide on their own fate, they are no longer have to be accept being infected by their clients. This mentality is called women empowerment, always use condom.
An interesting yet shocking experience chit-chatting with some of new sex workers, still at the same complex, one of the Mainline workers asked to those sex workers whether they always offered their clients to use condom. Some of them said yes, some shyly said sometimes, and I caught a girl whispered to her friend asking what condom was, and after her friend explained she said she often rejected when her client offered to use condom. It was sad to know the girl had no whatsoever knowledge what condom was, what great value it’s supposed to give her and yet she had to work on that field.
I hope that experience can be an eye-opening of how important education is to empower people to protect themselves which will lead to the harm reduction of HIV/AIDS.
