PrEP on Trial: the Future of HIV in Indonesian Policy Worlds - CASTAC Blog Post

Such forms of inequality remain acutely felt by Indonesian transgender and MSM populations. Against the backdrop of the PrEP trial, even earlier forms of testing and treatment, as well as other forms of hospital care, are by no means assured. In Indonesia, viral load testing remains rare, given that patients must pay for themselves, and medication stockouts are not unheard of. Laboratory equipment needed to undertake viral load tests are often unavailable or broken. At the same time, tidak terdeteksi (undetectable) has emerged as an important moral force for people living with HIV in Indonesia, even as it circulates alongside a widespread concern for managing outer bodily signs of the virus, tied to the quality of skin tone, hair, and weight (Hegarty 2021). Yet even as they circulate as a part of global discourse, giving rise to new forms of morality and personhood, the technologies that give rise to being “undetectable” are – like PrEP – not available to everyone and on the same terms. As such, HIV technologies such as PrEP do not represent a teleological progression towards self-surveilling subjects but emerge against a backdrop of persistent forms of global inequality and their colonial histories that unfold in the present.

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