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s many as 60 new cases of HIV/AIDS have been found in Greater Surakarta this year, raising concerns among activists and local authorities.

Of the newly found cases, 19 are HIV and 41 are AIDS infections. Seventeen of them were reported in March, one being a 4-year-old toddler who received the infection from the mother. Six did not survive the disease.

Tommy Prawoto of the Surakarta AIDS Control Commission (KPA) said that there were a total of 742 cases of HIV/AIDS in Greater Surakarta from October 2005 to March 2012, of which 296 could not survive the disease.

“So far, women and teenagers have been the most vulnerable against HIV/AIDS infection,” Tommy said on Wednesday.

Greater Surakarta comprises Surakarta municipality and the neighboring regencies of Boyolali, Sukoharjo, Karanganyar, Wonogiri, Sragen and Klaten.

“We still believe that the highest infections are among commercial sex workers.

“Yet, many have made it obscure by identifying themselves as housewives or entrepreneurs,” Tommy said.

This, he said, was because voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) depended very much on the honesty of participating people with HIV/AIDS in revealing their true identities.

To help control infections among commercial sex workers, Tommy said, the KPA had been conducting supervision on safe sex to teenage sex workers, and had recently carried it out with 18 of them in
Surakarta.

“They were mostly school students who did not want to reveal their true identities,” he said.