W

hile many Indonesian women donned their finest kebaya (traditional dress) to celebrate Kartini Day on Tuesday, Jero Suma wore her usual sleeveless shirt, short pants and cheap plastic shoes.

Don't ask her the original colors of her outfit. Years of hard work transporting garbage and household waste have turned the color of her clothes into various shades of battered grey.

Suma does not care about the color of the working uniform. She does not mind the exhausting work of lifting heavy iron garbage cart daily. Nor does the stench of garbage, physical testament to her long working days in Kaliungu, East Denpasar, bother her.

She has something more important to worry about; her HIV/AIDS status.

The 40-year-old woman was unaware she had contracted the deadly virus until her husband passed away five years ago.

Her neighbors refused to cleanse and bathe the deceased's body, an obligatory ritual prior to burial or cremation, for fear of contracting the disease.

Only after his death, did Suma realize her husband was HIV positive.

It was a solitary time for Suma.

The terror inflicted by HIV/AIDS was so intense that her family deserted her, leaving the grieving widow to cope with her personal loss and fear alone.

"For a year my family abandoned me after finding out my late husband had HIV/AIDS," she said in Balinese.

The only people who kept her company were the activists from the Bali+ foundation.

The local NGO assigned a counselor to assist and accompany Suma throughout the initial ordeal of living with one of the most fearsome viruses.

The counselors reminded Suma about her medication schedule, two dosages of anti retro virals (ARV)per day, and also took her for regular viral load tests.

"He kept reminding me to take my medicine, telling me it was an important step to remaining healthy. To be honest, until now I still had no idea what AIDS was all about," she said during her lunch break.

Then she gazed at her cart, the faithful tool that helped her earn Rp 500,000 per month.

Suma is one of as many as 767 women with HIV/AIDS in Bali, although the actual figure is thought to be much higher than this official number.

The Bali AIDS Commission (KPAD) estimates the number of commercial sex workers affected by the virus could be as high as 1,900.

The estimation does not include the sexual partners of HIV/AIDS-positive men.

"Official figures are based solely on the data acquired by the gov-ernment's screening mechanism and NGO outreach programs," KPAD spokesperson Mangku Karmaya said.

The screening and outreach program have yet to reach nor identify, hundreds of infected women who are not aware of their status due to lack of knowledge and absence of symptoms closely associated with the disease.

"After eight years of working in this field, we could only reach a total of 97 HIV positive women," Bali+ founder Putu Utami said, stressing that the existing social stigma toward HIV/AIDS significantly hampered the foundation's works.

There are several NGOs working with people who have HIV/AIDS in Bali. However, even their combined work his yet to succeed in reaching and assisting half of the total number of women with the virus.