Today we paid a visit to the 8th Puskesmas where we're doing the HIV testing for pregnant women - the final one in the funded program (there are 30 Puskesmas in Makassar, so it's too bad the Global Fund money isn't bigger, but this is a pilot project). For the last 3 or 4 of these, we've settled into a pattern where Akbar (the director of GC) makes the initial presentation as he's done all along, but then when he goes into a room to be one of the 3-4 counselors meeting one-on-one with the women considering testing, I stay in the big room and do a question-and-answer session with the women waiting to get tested. It's fun and a great way to get a feel for the kinds of concerns average Indonesians have about HIV/AIDS. Today I got questions like "what if the baby is born with HIV; how do I protect its health?"; "I heard on the TV that there was a husband and wife who were both HIV negative but the baby had HIV, is that possible?" (answer: basically no unless the baby was raped or a dirty needle in the hospital ward or something); "if a woman is positive, can she still have sex with her husband?"; and so on. We still have the post-test visits to do for 5 of the 8 puskesmas, but the program is now winding down, and it's been great that the timing worked out so I was able to follow it all the way through.
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