The Jakarta government has prepared 202 HIV/AIDS testing facilities in 149 hospitals, community health centers, private clinics, and penitentiaries. They conducted tests on 428,508 people in 2022.
Mariana, a coordinator at the Health Department of the Social Welfare Bureau of the Jakarta Regional Secretariat, said on Monday that 72,442 infected people have received antiretroviral (ARV) treatment.
However, only 33,590 of them (around 51 percent) regularly take the medicine, she said.
In addition, an examination was conducted on 237 pregnant women to ensure their babies were not exposed to HIV/AIDS during the period.
"As many as 180 out of the 237 pregnant women have routinely taken ARV treatment, and there were nine babies born exposed to HIV," she explained.
She called on the public not to discriminate against HIV-exposed children in Jakarta.
"Those children living with HIV need support from us, not discrimination," she emphasized.
In a post on Instagram, the Jakarta Health Service informed that transmission of HIV is increasing, and housewives constitute the majority of the cases.
As many as 35 percent of housewives are infected, with a higher number of cases in other groups, such as husbands of sex workers and the group of men who have sex with men.
Mother-to-child HIV transmission accounts for 20-45 percent of all sources of HIV spread, and 45 percent of babies born from HIV-positive mothers will be born with HIV and will have an HIV-positive status throughout their lives.
Moreover, only 55 percent of pregnant women were tested for HIV, while the rest did not receive permission to be tested from their husbands. Of these, 7,153 women were HIV positive, and 76 percent of them had not received ARV treatment.
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Translator: Siti Nurhaliza, Resinta S
Editor: Anton Santoso
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