Objective: To assess HIV prevalence and predictive factors for HIV among male sex workers in Spain. Methods: In this study we analysed all male sex workers who visited HIV testing clinics in 19 Spanish cities between 2000 and 2002. The information was obtained during examination by means of a brief questionnaire. For repeating testers, only the last confirmed result was taken into account. Resu...

The women, men, and transgender people who sell sex globally have disproportionate risks and burdens of HIV in countries of low, middle, and high income, and in concentrated and generalised epidemic contexts. The greatest HIV burdens continue to be in African female sex workers. Worldwide, sex workers still face reduced access to needed HIV prevention, treatment, and care services. Legal enviro...

Community mobilisation strategies for HIV/AIDS prevention based on recognition of social vulnerability and concepts of empowerment have emerged at the forefront of international efforts to reduce the AIDS pandemic, increasingly replacing a focus on individual risk. This paper describes the start-up phase of a participatory learning and action project to create a sense of community identity as a...

We examined the risk perceptions, prevention and treatment seeking for HIV/AIDS/STIs of 124 female commercial sex workers from 52 randomly selected brothels in Kano, Nigeria using a descriptive cross sectional design. We analysed the data using Epi Info 3.5.1. The mean age of the sex workers was 26.4 +/- 1.9 years, and most were indigenous Hausas (33.9%), single (50.8%) and had at least seconda...

OBJECTIVES We sought to study suicidal behavior prevalence and its association with social and gender disadvantage, sex work, and health factors among female sex workers in Goa, India. METHODS Using respondent-driven sampling, we recruited 326 sex workers in Goa for an interviewer-administered questionnaire regarding self-harming behaviors, sociodemographics, sex work, gender disadvantage, an...

BACKGROUND Myanmar (Burma), with an upper estimate of 400,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, faces a dangerous and potentially devastating epidemic. Female sex workers in the country are one of the most affected populations, with high prevalence rates of both HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). METHODS A qualitative study was undertaken in Yangon at the end of 2002 to investigate th...

OBJECTIVE Peer-led outreach is a critical element of HIV and STI-reduction interventions aimed at sex workers. We study the association between peer-led outreach to sex workers and the time to utilize health facilities for timely STI syndromic-detection and treatment. Using data on the timing of peer-outreach interventions and clinic visits, we utilize an Extended Cox model to assess whether pe...

This paper reports on findings from an ethnographic study of female sex workers who work in the indoor sex markets in a British city. An unexpected finding was the collective narratives that sex workers construct to rationalise their involvement in the sex industry. Fifty-five respondents who took part in in-depth interviews maintained that prostitution is a useful occupation and function in so...

BACKGROUND There is growing interest in the ways in which legal and human rights issues related to sex work affect sex workers' vulnerability to HIV and abuses including human trafficking and sexual exploitation. International agencies, such as UNAIDS, have called for decriminalisation of sex work because the delivery of sexual and reproductive health services is affected by criminalisation and...

The best known of the conflicts occurring in eusocial Hymenoptera is queen-worker conflict over sex ratio. So far, sex ratio theory has mostly focused on optimal investment in the production of male versus female sexuals, neglecting the investment in workers. Increased investment in workers decreases immediate sexual productivity but increases expected future colony productivity. Thus, an impor...