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Indonesia's Vast Papua in the Grip of Asia's Worst AIDS Crisis
Sitting in a hospice in this highlands town, which much of the time is only accessible to the outside world by plane, Mabele might get treatment in time.
But her friend Juliana Halo did not.
"She was a friend of mine, we sat together in school, but yesterday she died. She was the same age as me," Mabele said.
Papua, a vast territory of tropical jungles and jagged mountain peaks on the western edge of New Guinea island, has seen an explosion in HIV/AIDS cases among a population that is the poorest in Indonesia.
Its infection rate, estimated at 2.4 out of every 100 people, is one of the highest outside Africa. And it is set to rise.
Foreign journalists are usually barred from visiting Papua, which has been under Indonesian control since the 1960s and is home to a low-level independence insurgency.
AFP was granted access under escort by an officer of Indonesia's state intelligence agency.
While HIV/AIDS rates in the rest of Indonesia are low, a combination of poverty, distance, lack of education and plenty of sex is driving infections in Papua, according to the government AIDS commission.
The disease is hitting hardest in remote regions like the Baliem Valley, which was untouched by the outside world until after World War II and where many men go naked except for long, pointed gourds over their penises.
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