PREVALENSI INFEKSI MENULAR SEKSUAL, FAKTOR RISIKO DAN PERILAKU DI KALANGAN ANAK JALANAN YANG DIBINA LEMBAGA SWADAYA MASYARAKAT DI JAKARTA, TAHUN 2000

A rough estimate of 4 to 20 thousand children work and/or live in the streets of Jakarta. These children are at the ages where sexual awareness and activities are rising. Living in an environment where regulations and socio-spiritual norms are more lax gives them more freedom to be sexually active. Previous study showed that many of them were forced to start sexual lives at early age by older peers, some were forced to enter prostitution. All of these put the street children at high risk to get sexually transmitted infections (STI), including HIV. So far, there had not been any STI survey study conducted among this community in Indonesia. The objectives of this study were to measure the prevalence of gonorrhoea, chlamydia, syphilis, and HIV infection among male street children in Jakarta, and to investigate their risky behaviours. In the year 2000, male street children aged 10 to 20 years in Jakarta who were reached-out by NGOs were interviewed using a short questionnaire. Specimens of venous blood, urethral, anal and throat swabs were taken for laboratory tests. As the results, among the 274 children who participated, more than half (58.4%) were children "on" the street (had somewhat regular contact with their family), and the rest were children "of" the street (little or no contact with the family). Knowledge of STI was low, while 22.3%) admitted to be sexually active (one out of 3 children "of" the street). Condom use was very low: 85.2% among the sexually active never used condoms and only 5% used it continuously. The prevalence of gonorrhoea was 7.7%, chlamydia 7.4%, syphilis 0%, and HIV 0%. Self-treatment was practiced by 31.4% of the participants