HIV Experts Meeting Seeks Wider Promotion of Condom Use in Sex Work

BEIJING, 4 April 2007 — Increasing condom use between sex workers and their clients has proven to be an effective and essential way to slow the spread of AIDS. At a two-day workshop here this week, health experts shared experiences from China and other Asian countries and discussed challenges in expanding programmes on HIV prevention in sex work.

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS co-hosted the meeting in collaboration with the Chinese Ministry of Health and the National Population and Family Planning Commission. The 120 participants came from national, provincial and local health departments; academic institutions; non-governmental organizations, and UN agencies.

Unprotected sex is now the leading transmission route for HIV in China. Sex work, in a variety of settings, is widespread, and condom use is generally low. The national HIV/AIDS action plan calls for intensified efforts to address risky behaviour, including in sex work.

In recent years, numerous local efforts have promoted HIV awareness and condom use in this context, drawing on models used successfully in Thailand and elsewhere. Both WHO and UNFPA have supported some of them. There are now 480 such programme sites throughout the country, but they cover less than 20 per cent of Chinese counties. The workshop aimed to identify successful practices so they can be applied more widely, along with potential difficulties and ways to overcome them.

Presenters shared results from projects in Guangxi, Hunan, Hebei and Hubei provinces, and one in Mongolia. All seek to achieve “100 per cent condom use”, or “no condom, no sex” in relations between sex workers and clients. Approaches vary, but generally involve cooperation among health authorities, police, entertainment venue owners, and sex workers trained to be peer educators.

“The only way HIV/AIDS can spread into a general epidemic is through sexual transmission,” WHO Representative in China Dr. Hank Bekedam told the meeting. “Scaling up the 100 per cent Condom Use Programme is an urgent priority.”

Other speakers from UNFPA, the UN Development Fund for Women (Unifem) and WHO focused on general principles. These included the need to: address the human rights and health needs of sex workers, and the gender inequality and lack of opportunity that contribute to sex work; to link HIV prevention, treatment and care to reproductive health programmes; to combat stigma, discrimination and violence; and to include sex workers and their networks when designing programmes.

“If you want your programmes to work, involve communities,” stressed Khartini Siamah, coordinator of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers. Health workers need training so they don’t stigmatize sex workers seeking services, she added. “What does empowerment mean when sex workers cannot exercise their rights?”

“Sex workers are among the most vulnerable population group in the AIDS epidemic,” Dr. Bekedam concluded. “Promoting the consistent use of condoms will empower them to protect themselves and help to reduce the spread of AIDS.”

For more information:

William A. Ryan, UNFPA Regional Information Adviser, Bangkok, ryanw@unfpa.org, mobile +66 89 897 6984

Joanna Brent, Communications Team Leader, WHO China, tel. (86 10) 6532 7189 ext. 681, mobile (86 10) 1391 120 5167