DHAKA: Street sex workers are at risk in Bangladesh due to Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) like HIV leading to make them vulnerable to permanent damage such as infertility and even death.
Widespread unprotected heterosexual intercourse has made sex work here an epidemic with the threat of venereal diseases, spreading from person to person through intimate and sexual contact. These infectious diseases have appeared as dangerous for human health.
For sex sellers tend to engage themselves with multiple sex partners of a wide range of people and behaviours and men, transgender people and women, they are highly vulnerable to several Sexual Transmission Diseases (STDs/STI) and HIV infection.
They are even likely to carry and transmit virus to other people often ignoring use of condoms.
Researchers opined street sex workers contracting HIV through unprotected sex with HIV infected men and sexual abuse has become a persistent problem in Bangladesh.
Despite having a low HIV-infection rate (less than 1%) in Bangladesh, there is a potential for expanding HIV epidemic in the future due to very receptivity to HIV infection here.
Significant and massive existence of sex work in Bangladesh, and low use of condom is escalating the situation gradually.
In Bangladesh, sex workers both in brothels as well as on the streets reported rather high client turnover. Women working in brothels nationwide averaged 19 clients a week and street workers reported between 12 and 16 in different cities.
Also consistent condom use is among the lowest in the region.
Moreover, lack of knowledge in sexually transmitted diseases and reluctance of condom use brings the country in a critical situation with the uprising threats of HIV infections.
The rise in others sexually transmitted infections in Bangladesh paves the way of spreading HIV and may lead to an extensive epidemic, as the heterosexual mode of others STI transmission caused for an increasing percentage of HIV transmission.
Non-government organization, Rainbow Nari O Shishu Kallyan Foundation and LRB Foundation in their studies on street beggars at Kamrangirchar, Lalbagh and Polashi in Dhaka showed that 40-45 percent of homeless beggars (adult male) indulge in multi-partner sex with less than 10 percent of them reporting condom use.
As per street sex workers who are closely associated with the tourism and transport industries are the main sexual partners of them as clients are found available in the roaming areas waiting on the streets.
Sex workers controlled by own-self or broker groups, tend to wait on busy streets, bus stops, railway stations, cinema halls and river-bank to negotiate the contract, from where they go to cheap hotels, under constriction building, darkness park-place and lodges with their clients.
GHARONI Executive Director Roushan Ara Rekha an expert in the field, said banglanews, “On a regional basis, infected men have the chance to outnumber infected women by 1 to 3 or more, since commercial sex clients, injecting drug users and gays have contributed much to the rapid growth of the epidemic at the primary stage.”
“This male/female ratio is expected to drop as the epidemic spreads into the general population through spread of HIV from clients of sex workers to their regular partners and spouses,” she said.
Association for Social Advancement and Rural Rehabilitation (ASARR) Executive Director MCM Lokman Hossain said as conventional perspectives on prostitution is still repressive, moralizing and controlling, and treating the customers as objects rather than active subject.
“The customers also remain excluded from discussions around policy and legislation,” he added.
BDST: 2120 HRS, JAN 31, 2014
