JAKARTA: Housewives in Indonesia are now facing the greatest risk of contracting HIV, experts were reported as saying on Saturday. The new findings from the Surabaya AIDS Prevention Commission has said that sex workers are no longer the highest at-risk population in the country to have HIV. Emi Yuliana of the Surabaya AIDS Prevention Commission (KPA) said that in the past two years there has been a growing trend in the number of housewives with HIV/AIDS. “Compared to PSK (commercial sex workers), the trend is increasing significantly. This is because many have intervened and made transmissions (of HIV) among PSK under control,” Emi was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying. Kartika from Health Agency in Surabaya, the capital of East Java province, said that community health centers (puskesmas) did not have programs concentrating on the detection of HIV/AIDS in housewives as programs in Surabaya Puskesmas are focused on pregnant mothers. Alan Islami, a social worker focused on HIV prevention in Jakarta told Bikyamasr.com on Sunday that he believes the statistics. “Unfortunately, we have seen a real rise in the number of married women who have become infected with HIV across the country,” he said. “I think this is a direct result of the growing sex trade and the reality that Indonesian men are not being faithful to their wives and have multiple partners with unprotected sex.” East Java ranks the second highest province in terms of the number of HIV/AIDS sufferers, according to the Health Ministry. Kartika recommended using new tools to detect HIV/AIDS among housewives, such as score cards that would be distributed to pregnant mothers who come to puskesmas. The score cards will be able to gauge whether women are at high risk. “For instance, (the score card includes) questions about their sexual behavior and their husbands' job. If for example, the husband works as a inter-province driver and rarely comes home, we could consider them as potential. From there we will assess and give them counselling so that they will take an HIV/AIDS test,” Kartika said. In Bogor, West Java, 60 percent of HIV/AIDS cases were from housewives. That marks a 12 percent increase and makes it the fastest growth rate among high-risk groups, exceeding the growth rate among commercial sex workers. Data for 2012 showed that 1,542 people in Bogor were living with HIV and 949 were AIDS positive. The city recorded 65 deaths from the disease this year. “Out of the total number of HIV and AIDS sufferers, 60 percent are housewives,” Edgar Suratman, head of the Bogor Regional HIV/ AIDS Control Agency (BPAD), said.
