What life is like for some of Indonesia's HIV-positive children

Groups and volunteers provide support in the face of state inaction, persistent stigma

- Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja

A school-turned-shelter for children born with HIV in Solo, Central Java. It is one of two shelters in Solo run by volunteers and they have housed more than 80 HIV-positive children since 2012.

(ST PHOTO: WAHYUDI SOERIAATMADJA)

The squat, one-storey school building near the Bengawan Solo (Solo River) appears unremarkable from the outside. Inside, rows of bunk beds line former classrooms, the blackboards and chalk replaced with simple shelves and medicine boxes.

This is home to 19 children born with HIV. In a second house across town live another 17 such youngsters. All depend on three volunteers, and a patchwork of private donations, to stay afloat.

When The Straits Times visited the school-turned-shelter on Nov 28, the children were mourning the recent death of 17-year-old Siti Safia (not her real name).

She had, unbeknown to her carers, stopped taking her antiretroviral (ARV) pills.

"We found many pills hidden under her bed," said Mr Puger Mulyono. "She held them under her tongue and spat them out later," said the 51-year-old volunteer, whom the children affectionately call ayah, which means father in Bahasa Indonesia.

Siti was the latest of the 26 residents at the two shelters who have died since 2012.

Her life, and death, underscores the fragile lives inside these modest shelters and the lack of consistent state support for people living with HIV in Indonesia.

Indonesia has an estimated 564,000 people living with HIV as at 2025, according to the Health Ministry. About 65 per cent of these know their status, and just 255,000 receive ARV treatment, which is free in public health centres but unevenly available. Fewer than half of the country's 13,700 facilities dispense the medication.