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Indonesia needs grand change to mitigate HIV/AIDS: Activists
In 2018, Indonesia recorded 46,000 new cases of HIV, the third biggest rise of new cases [after China and India] in the Asia-Pacific region. Deaths related to AIDS in Indonesia increased 58 percent, from 24,000 in 2010 to 38,000 in 2018. Hence, activists are pushing for a grand change to mitigate HIV/AIDS.
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You’ve got a friend: A volunteer wearing a red ribbon that reads “Friend of people with human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS)” campaigns on a busy street in Surabaya, East Java. The campaign during World AIDS Day aims to eradicate the stigma of HIV/AIDS and the discrimination against people with the syndrome. (The Jakarta Post/Sigiet Pamungkas)
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n the middle of a Heroes Cemetery in Surakarta, Central Java, there is a home. Sometimes even taxi drivers do not want to go there. That is not only because it is in the middle of the quiet cemetery, but also because it is the residence of 32 children of the Lentera Foundation, a community-based organization for orphan children living with HIV-AIDS.
Puger Mulyono, the founder of the foundation, said that for the children it was their fourth house as people keep casting them out once they know they have HIV. Finally, with the help of local agencies and private institutions, they finally can have a ‘hopefully” permanent home.
“Now there is no demonstration or rejection anymore because we live in a cemetery. (…) But I’m grateful they evicted us because now we get much help and we have a home,” Puger said on Sunday in an event held by Dharmendra Kumar Tyagi (DKT) Indonesia to honor the local heroes who are trying to eliminate HIV/AIDS, like him.
Puger is a parking attendant who with some friends have dedicated their lives to take care of orphaned children who were infected with the disease by their parents and had nowhere to go as they were also rejected by their relatives.
Puger said that since 2012 he has taken care of 44 children living with HIV/AIDS. At this moment there are 32 children up to to 16 years old who live together in the house in 11 bedrooms.
The children have experienced rejections not only from their relatives, but also from their communities and from schools.
“Each of them who is school-aged has been expelled by the schools at least four times once they found out that they are children with HIV/AIDS,” Puger said.
