Located in Southeastern Asia between the Indian and Pacific Oceans , Indonesia is an archipelago of 17,508 islands of which 6,000 are inhabited. The world's fourth most populated country, Indonesia faces severe socio-economic difficulties including steady currency devaluation, hiking fuel prices, acts of terrorism, a volatile separatist movement, and, most recently, a major tsunami and the devastating effects of the Avian flu (World Bank 2005). Rising rates of HIV/AIDS over the last five years add to the struggles of a nation already beset with major health problems and inadequate resources to meet them.

Currently, 44.9% of its population reside in urban areas (UNAIDS/WHO, 2004). The first case of AIDS in Indonesia was identified in 1987. Today, HIV in Indonesia has reached what the World Health Organization refers to as the “concentrated stage” – all the factors are present for a rapidly spreading epidemic (Riono and Jazant, 2004), including: an extensive sex industry, limited capacity to detect and treat HIV/STIs, a highly mobile population that can facilitate spread of the virus, an explosion in injection drug use, and increasingly high-risk social conditions for HIV exacerbated by massive economic instability and political disruption (Synergy Project, UNAID, 2004). Between 90,000 to 130,000 Indonesians are estimated as having contracted HIV by 2002, but more than 12 to 19 million are believed to be at behavioral risk for infection as the epidemic gains momentum among high-risk groups and also becomes generalized within one of the world's largest populations (Ministry of Health, 2003). The majority of infections currently are concentrated in groups with high-risk behavior, particularly sex workers, injecting drug users, and prisoners (Riono and Jazant, 2004).

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