Microchips to track AIDS spread in Papua, Indonesia

Jakarta, November 28: Indonesian lawmakers are supporting a controversial bill to embed microchips in AIDS patients to monitor and track the virus spread, which has drawn strong ire from the rights activists.

According to internationally funded research, the easternmost and poorest province of Indonesia, Papua, is the most badly affected of all Indonesian provinces, where the infection rate is 15 times higher than the national average, with about 61 AIDS patients per 100,000. The province lags behind in every aspect of knowledge about AIDS and STD's.

Legislator John Manangsang quoted that small computer chips inserted under the skin of "sexually aggressive" AIDS sufferers, will help the authorities to track them better. The technology would then help track those infected people who try infecting others intentionally. The offenders found in that case would be imposed fine up to $5,000 fine or six months’ imprisonment.

The bill may come into power next month onwards if voted for by majority, which is quite likely to happen as it has received a major support from the members of the provincial parliament so far. However, technical and practical details involved in the strategy still need to be devised.

With fastest growing HIV rates in Asia, Indonesia ranks fourth in the population index, with a total of 235 million people. Of these, about 290,000 have contracted AIDS largely due to extreme use of intravenous drugs and prostitution.

Weynand Watar, a lawmaker who visualizes radio frequency identification tags, similar to tags that monitor everything, said: "The health situation is extraordinary, so we have to take extraordinary action."

Lawmakers stated that a committee would be formed, who will decide and select the chip recipients and observe their actions, but the method of operations and selection of committee’s leader is still uncertain.

The global organizations are not aware of any such laws where, HIV/AIDS patients have to be embedded with microchips, said UNAIDS country coordinator Nancy Fee. She has "grave concerns" regarding the bill's impact on human rights and public health, though she has not seen the bill yet.

"No one should be subject to unlawful or unnecessary interference of privacy," says Fee. She maintained that strategies like these are not successful in taming the epidemic, as is evident in many other nations, who imposed tyrannical approaches to deal with AIDS but failed.

Fee stated that such oppressive actions can threaten people and may worsen the problem further. AIDS activists and the local health workers have termed the move as "abhorrent".

Well-known Papuan activist Tahi Ganyang Butarbutar said:"People with AIDS aren't animals; we have to respect their rights."

Butarbutar said that awareness can tackle the epidemic in a better way. The authorities must spend enough on sexual education and condom use.