Indonesia set to tag and track HIV/AIDS sufferers
 

JAYAPURA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia's Papua province is set to pass a bylaw that requires some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips in a bid to prevent them infecting others, a lawmaker said on Saturday.

Under the bylaw, which has caused uproar among human rights activists, patients who had shown "actively sexual behavior" could be implanted with a microchip to monitor their activity, lawmaker John Manangsang said.

"It's a simple technology. A signal from the microchip will track their movements and this will be received by monitoring authorities," Manangsang said.

If a patient with HIV/AIDS was found to have infected a healthy person, there would be a penalty, he said without elaborating.

The Jakarta Post newspaper on Saturday quoted Constan Karma, the head of Papua's National AIDS Commission, as saying the plan violated human rights.

The local parliament was expected to introduce the controversial legislation in Papua, which lies in Indonesia's easternmost fringe, by end of this month, Manangsang said.

The number of HIV/AIDS cases per 100,000 people in Papua is nearly 20 times the national average in Indonesia, according to a government study in 2007.

Health experts say the disease has been spreading rapidly from prostitutes to housewives in the past years.

High rates of promiscuity, rituals in some Papuan tribes where partner swapping takes place, poor education about AIDS and lack of condoms are among factors that cause the spread of the disease there.



http://www.reuters.com/article/healt...4AN3U620081124

It's a human right to have indiscriminate unprotected sex spreading a deadly virus?

Who knew?

In some places it could be charged as murder...hey....what can I say.

It seems like this ignores IV drug use as a mode of transmission....

What kind of a microchip is this? One that can detect when the host is having sex? Or are the HIV Police going to follow the person around, going from place to place and asking people if they had sex with the infected person?

umm.. teaching safer sex practices are too expensive? Define "active". Condoms are more expensive than paying someone to talk about how to have safer sex for an hour?

Well, if it's about tracking the infected, I don't see how that's true. Authorities, according to the article, would still be able to see where the infected folks had been.

I wonder how much this is just aimed at people in the sex trade? That police could turn up at a location known for prostitution and then track the microchips.

Similarly, if police enter an IV drug shooting gallery. . .

Requiring your customers to use condoms might kill your business. And I think there have been a lot of studies that indicate it's the rare culture in which women can demand their husbands use condoms without pretty severe social penalty.

We have a tendency to assume that what we think worked in the US will work elsewhere, but it doesn't always.

The are entitled to use whatever means they think will be the most effective.

really...AIDS can kill your business too...heh!

AIDS jokes?

You are going to hell.

You thought that was a joke?

Go to sleep.

Yes. I believe it is....there are and have been some cases where it's been treated the same as someone aiming a gun into a crowd and pulling the trigger. I believe that there are at least 30+ states in the US where it is illegal.

Yeah, and....why do they have that but not condoms?