T

he Badung administration will draft a regent’s decree regulating tattoo parlors and artists following a report about a man allegedly contracting HIV from a parlor.

The claim made by a state health authority in Australia was that an Australian contracted HIV after getting a tattoo during a vacation in Bali.

“I have organized the effort to draft the regent’s decree with related institutions, to regulate tattoo parlors in Badung, especially to provide the legal basis for cracking down on the illegal ones,” deputy regent I Ketut Sudikerta said.

A regent’s decree has a weaker legal standing than a bylaw.

On the other hand, drafting and passing a regent’s decree would generally require less time than a bylaw, in which the regent would need the support of the majority of the local legislative council.

He said that the regency had yet to pass a regulation on tattoo parlors, despite the fact that the business had the potential to spread diseases.

Kuta, which was the Australian’s favorite destination and the area with the largest population of tattoo artists, is part of the regency.

On Dec. 24, the online edition of Australia’s ABC News ran the story: “Getting tattoo in Bali is like having unprotected sex”.

The story quoted the West Australian Health Department as saying that one of the state’s residents had contracted HIV after getting a tattoo in the Indonesian tourist hotspot.

The age and sex of the victim have not been released, nor has the location of the parlor where the tattoo was obtained.

The story cited the statement of West Australia’s health director of communicable disease control Paul Armstrong, saying “Anybody who has had a tattoo in Bali or a body piercing in Bali should consider the information that’s come out and talk to their doctor about getting tested for HIV”.

The story triggered a heated response from Bali’s tattoo artists, who claimed that most parlors had implemented strict measures to prevent infection, as well as from the Bali health authority, who argued that it was scientifically very difficult to determine that one specific action at one particular time was responsible for the HIV infection.

“We have to respond to this immediately and anticipate similar cases in the future,” Sudikerta said.

He said the regency administration would not try to refute the claim since the most important thing to do was collect the data on tattoo parlors in Badung and regulate them.

“We will not allow tattoo businesses that don’t have studios and don’t use sterilized equipment,” he stressed, adding that the regulation was important to provide legal protection for tattoo parlors that had implemented strict health safety measures.

“We don’t want the foreign visitors to shun these qualified tattoo parlors due to the report,” he added.

Known as the island’s richest regency, Badung owes much of its revenue to the tourism industry. Hotel and restaurant tax generates around Rp 1 trillion per year for the regency.

Sudikerta, who also chairs the regency’s AIDS Mitigation Commission, said the number of HIV cases in the regency was increasing, with an estimated number of 759 people.

Data from the provincial health agency showed that the number accounted for 15 percent of the total 5,300 cases in Bali since 1987. Denpasar and Buleleng are the two regencies with the highest number of cases, followed by Badung.

HIV/AIDS epidemiology expert DN Wirawan said with an antibody test, a person could be tested positive for HIV around six to 12 weeks after the first infection. The process could be accelerated by using the RNA PCR test, which could detect the infection within three to four weeks.