International Donors Expected To Reduce HIV/AIDS Funding to Indonesia, Officials Say

International donors are expected to "drastically" reduce their contributions to HIV/AIDS programs in Indonesia in part because donors now consider the country to be a middle-income nation, Indonesian Welfare Minister Aburizal Barkie said Wednesday, Reuters reports. Foreign aid currently accounts for 70% of the funds for HIV/AIDS services in the country.

According to Barkie, donors such as the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia will reduce their contributions this year. The country will need an additional one trillion rupiah, or about $109 million, to fund its HIV/AIDS programs, he said (Pathoni, Reuters, 3/12). The government is looking to provincial governments and other sources, including nongovernmental organizations, to address the shortfall (Agence France-Presse, 3/12).

Indonesia's National AIDS Commission in a report said the shortfall is "expected to continue until 2010." Nancy Fee, Indonesia's country coordinator for UNAIDS, said that although some countries might reduce their aid, Indonesia would still receive a significant amount of international support. She added that the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has allocated $32 million to Indonesia over the next two years (Reuters, 3/12).

Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari on Wednesday called on the mining company Freeport to contribute funding to the fight against HIV/AIDS in the Indonesian province of Papua, where the company operates, as part of its corporate social responsibility program. The Ministry of Health estimated that in 2006, Papua and West Papua provinces together have the highest HIV prevalence in the country at about 2.4% (Agence France-Presse, 3/12).

According to NAC, government programs aimed at reducing the spread of HIV have reached between 5% and 20% of people at high risk of the virus. The commission has estimated there will be one million HIV/AIDS cases by 2015 if services are not increased (Reuters, 3/12). The country recorded 19,335 HIV/AIDS cases at the end of 2007, up from 13,424 at the end of 2006 (Agence France-Presse, 3/12). HIV prevalence is increasing rapidly among commercial sex workers and injection drug users in the country and has spread to the general population in Papua, Reuters reports (Reuters, 3/12).