Prevention, control and treatment of HIV-AIDS among injecting drug use in Bandung, Indonesia.

Indonesia is facing a growing HIV-epidemic that in many areas is driven by injecting drug use (IDU). IDUs underutilize health services, partly because of legal aspects which also cause that many are held in prison, where further HIV- transmission may take place. Most HIV-infected patients present with advanced HIV-AIDS and many deaths before starting antiretroviral treatment. The growing HIV-epidemic in Indonesia has socio-economical implications for individual patients as well as for the health system and for society. IMPACT, a multidisciplinary university-based program in Bandung, West-Java, integrates HIV-prevention and treatment, combining research and implementation. Biomedical, public health and sociobehavioral expertise is used for educational programs for adolescents; scaling-up HIV-testing, harm reduction strategies and care for HIV/AIDS in hospital, community and prison; and institutional as well as individual capacity building related to IDU and HIV/AIDS. It is expected that these activities can make a significant contribution to control of HIV-AIDS in the context of injecting drug use in West-Java and Indonesia as a whole.

Transmission profile of hepatitis B virus infection in the Batam region, Indonesia. Evidence for a predominantly horizontal transmission profile.

The aim of this study was to describe the distribution of hepatitis B virus markers among the autochthonous and immigrant multicultural populations of Riau province, Indonesia, in order to define the groups at risk and their infrastructure. This investigation was part of a large hepatitis B vaccination study. A total of 9701 healthy individuals, aged 5 years or older and living in the urbanised area of Batam, near Singapore, and on the surrounding islands were included. Socio-epidemiological data were collected, blood was drawn, and sera were tested for antibodies to hepatitis B core (anti-HBc) and surface antigen (anti-HBs). Anti-HBc-positive sera were tested against hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). All tests comprised immunoassays from Roche (Germany) using Elecsys 2010. Complete data were available from 9314 subjects. The results showed relatively low prevalences of anti-HBc (a marker of a previous hepatitis B infection) and HBsAg in the 5-year-old chiLdren (5.8 and 1.9%, respectively) that increased continuously with increasing age. High anti-HBs levels (>1000 IU/L) were found in all age cohorts, indicating a lifelong threat of active hepatitis B infection. In conclusion, the transmission profile of hepatitis B appeared to be mainly horizontal (person-to-person) in the highly endemic region studied. Vertical transmission was less than 5%. The horizontal transmission routes included non-sexual activities of life since children <10 years of age also showed considerable infection rates. The results underline the need for catch-up hepatitis B vaccination programs for children and adults.