Indonesia AIDS campaign urges a change in attitude toward gays

Health officials in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-populated country, say the nation must change its attitudes toward gays in order to stop the spread of HIV, Agence France-Presse reports. Indonesia's National Committee on AIDS Control will begin meeting in September to develop ways to fight HIV in the country. The committee is already calling for Muslims--particularly clerics and government officials--to stop discriminating against gay men, which the committee says keeps them from seeking information about safer sex and getting HIV antibody tests. Gay men account for the second-largest percentage of HIV cases in the nation, behind injection-drug users. The World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS say the country must take immediate steps to address the spread of HIV among gay men and drug users to prevent a major explosion of HIV in the nation, which has about 220 million people.