Liah Metters was the guest speaker for September 23. She is a 5th year medical student in the UK, and is a mature-age student so most her class-mates are about 10 years younger. Her special interest is prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. As part of her training she needs to spend some time working medically away from the UK. She had planned to work with AIDS sufferers in South Africa, but that did not happen so another option was to work in Bali. It was difficult to get a position in a hospital in Bali (red-tape) but she was pleased to work with Suki from Yayasan Citra Usadha, a group of volunteers in North Bali working with AIDS awareness training.

Rotary Club of Bali Lovina has been supporting Yayasan Citra Usadha by providing funds for the printing of leaflets.

She has observed that most the volunteers are young and male, and are enthusiastic. The number of AIDS sufferers in Bali is about 3,000. This is 0.1% of the population and is the 2nd highest rate (after Papua) in Indonesia. One method of spread in Bali is for sex workers to give it to young Bali men who then give it to their wives, and consequently put their future children at risk. So the awareness education needs to reach both the young men and the young wives - and a good place to start is the high schools.

Another observation was that people die from AIDS because they start with the medication and then stop. This is sometimes because they have more faith in traditional medicines/practices.

She felt the problem here was in an early stage so awareness of AIDS issues among the people is low. This reminds her of England 25 years ago, or the beginning of the epidemic in Africa. Consequently, she is optimistic that the current education projects will have a positive effect. She thought that Bali, being such a small island, could take effective action and she was happy to see that Rotary Clubs were helping with these awareness campaigns.