H

undreds of students, social workers and NGOs activists celebrated the Nusantara AIDS Vigil (MRAN) 2009 on Saturday night by issuing a five-point statement, demanding that the health institution stops discriminating against people with HIV/AIDS and asking the government to be more transparent in developing AIDS mitigation programs.

The local Drugs' Victims Association (IKON) initiated the statement in the annual gathering that took place at the Puputan Badung square in downtown Denpasar.

The first point of the statement asked all the relevant government agencies to be more thorough in developing their HIV/AIDS mitigation programs so as to create a more effective and coherent program and to prevent unnecessary duplications and overlappings.

In the second point, they demanded that hospitals and health care providers cease discriminatory practices targeting people with HIV/AIDS. One of those practices included pooling all patients with HIV/AIDS into one single ward regardless of their clinical symptoms and specific illness. The activists argued that people with HIV/AIDS must be treated in accordance with their specific illness, thus, must be placed in the ward specifically assigned for that illness.

"We hope the prison authority will issue a special policy that will enable an inmate, who falls ill due to HIV, to receive hospital treatment," IKON's member Ida Ayu Rupini said.

The fourth point concerned the role of the local AIDS Mitigation Commission (KPA), an inter-agencies body funded by the government. The activists demanded the commission to be more transparent in its process of drafting and designing HIV/AIDS mitigation programs.

In the last point, the activists asked the Bali Provincial Legislative Council to allocate sufficient funds from the the provinces' annual budgets to finance HIV/AIDS mitigation programs.

"The epidemic will not go away if we just sit here and do nothing," Rupini said to the scores of government officials that attended the virgil.

With "Together We Are the Solution" as its major theme, the vigil aimed at stimulating stronger government and general public participation in efforts to fight the epidemic.

During the vigil, several people with HIV/AIDS performed an art "happening". Wearing masks and with a cardboard sign around their necks, they sat on the grassy field of the square. The cardboard signs displayed different messages; from "Stop *wearing* Masks, Yes to Conscience" to "Stop Stigmatization and Discrimination."

"Its ironic; as the number of AIDS's victims increases so does the frequency of discrimination," Yayasan Hatihati's counselor Yusuf Rey Noldy said.

Up to March, the number of people with HIV/AIDS in Bali has reached 2,660, more than half of that number are within 20-29 year age group. However, Bali's KPA estimated the actual number is around 4,000.