Timika, Jubi – Timika Community Health Center medics are restricting the HIV examination on pregnant women. The Timika Community Health Center Chief Maria Yosinta Rahangiar, this week, said during the period of February – March 2015, her staffs discovered five women are HIV positive.
“We found five pregnant women with HIV in February, and one case in March. It might not well detected in the earlier months, but now due to the government’s Mother-Child Health Program, the pregnant women must get blood examination. It leads to those findings,” she said.
To respond these cases, the Chief instructed the midwives who examine the pregnant women to keep the health progress on HIV-positive pregnant women. “When the cases are discovered, I asked the midwives to follow these women to their houses to get their address, so we could monitor the progress of their pregnancy until the time of delivery,” said Rahangiar.
These HIV positive pregnant women wanted to get counseling separated from other pregnant women to cover their identity. “We will prepare the separate room for counseling in the future. Thus, they will be separated with other women. The VCT councilors will come to the clinic to give counseling and ARV (antiretroviral) medicines,” he said.
According to the data of Mimika AIDS Prevention Commission (KPA), the HIV-AIDS case in Mimika reach 4,072 cases till September 2014. The HIV-AIDS cases has rapidly increased in Mimika within the last eighteen years since it was founded for the first time in 1996 in a female sex worker at brothel complex located in Kampung Kadung Jaya, Mimika Sub-district.
The Mimika KPA Secretary Reynold Ubra said the responses on HIV-AIDS prevention in Mimika have indicated a better direction. One of its indicators is HIV minimum service standard to the population recently is about two percent, while it reached 20 percent in 2010.
The prevalence number to WPS key population is dropping from 20 percent in 2010 and now it reduces to 3 percent and the HIV prevalence case on pregnant women reduces from 3 percent in 2010 to 1 percent in October 2014.
Further Urba said the Regional Regulation No. 11/2007 about HIV Prevention and Control in Mimika also gave a huge impact on declining the HIV cases in particularly on the key population group.
The last six-month survey reported the cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and other sexual transmitted infections have not founded in this group. It also reported the safe sex campaign is significantly improved towards at-risk group in brothel. It increased from 55 percent in 2010 to 95 percent in October 2014. Further, the KPA Mimika also conducted a survey and VCT to the sex workers at massage spa and bars in the early of September 2014, which found people infected by HIV.
With a set up target of 25 thousand people, there are 31 thousand of Timika residents who participated in VCT program until October 2014, which resulted 1 percent of HIV case.
“It indicates that we must strong in supporting the transmitted people, in particularly those who got AIDS to regularly consume the medicine and provide the comfort environment for them,” he said.
“We must more intense in promoting the condom use to the risk group when they are having sex, as well as advising to be loyal to their partner. We keep promoting it because the mode of HIV transmission in Mimika is remaining the same, namely through sexual intercourse,” Urba said. (*/rom)
