Public Disclosure of HIV Status in Indonesia

In most countries, HIV infected individuals find difficulties in making a decision whether they will disclose their status or not. There are some who assert that public disclosure will give many benefits, especially for increasing public safety. However, others still contend that it is not an easy decision due to the dread of public stigmatisation and discrimination. This paper seeks to show that, in Indonesia, HIV positive status should be revealed in some situations by considering the right to privacy, sexual partners’ consent, and community’s readiness for receiving such a disclosure; meanwhile maintaining infected people’s dignity.

Disclosing HIV status to the public can create harmful consequences. The stigma can influence the psychology of both infected people and people who live with them. Furthermore, there are many potential risks of unveiling HIV status to sexual partners; such as denial, loss of financial support, violence, discrimination and disruption of family relationships. Similarly, divulging HIV status at workplaces can also create many negative reactions from employers and other workers. Another reason to consider is that revealing HIV status can jeopardize a patients’ privacy.

Along with these harmful effects, however, public revelation of HIV status can bring many positive outcomes. Although the disclosure faces stigmatisation and discrimination of the public, for long term, it will diminish the stigma. In addition, revealing HIV status to sexual partners has a number of benefits. The unveiling of HIV status may motivate sexual partners to take a HIV test, modify sexual behaviour, and ultimately reduce HIV transmission. HIV status disclosure in the workplace will not face many obstacles anymore, if employers can adopt the ILO principles that support HIV workers to reveal their status. The last important reason is that although public disclosure of HIV status can breach privacy, for some situations physicians still may reveal HIV patients’ status.

Finally, although disclosing HIV status in Indonesia faces strong stigmatisation, it is still important to reveal HIV status due to many long term benefits. However, the disclosure should consider infected people’s confidentiality, sexual partners’ consent and community’s readiness for accepting infected people while at the same time maintaining HIV people’s dignity.