BEHIND the skyscrapers of Jakarta lies an old neighborhood known as Kampung Bali, where a hypodermic needle hangs on a wooden gate-post. Day and night the needle is there ready to give its users a high from putaw, the Indonesian word for low-grade street heroin. But the needle is devoid of even the simplest form of sterilization of alcohol or bleach, making it the one big source of a growing HIV colony.

There are an estimated 39.4 million