KARACHI, July 9: A three-day skill building workshop on STIs (sexually transmitted infections) and HIV got under way on Thursday to educate and prepare sex workers for running various preventive health programmes solely for their own benefit.
The United Nations Population Fund, an international agency, is organising the workshop with the collaboration of the National Aids Control Programme. About 70 female sex workers, mainly from the red light areas of both Karachi and Hyderabad, turned up on the first day to attend lectures and interactive sessions.
The female workers were brought to the workshop entitled 'Skill building workshop on HIV and sex works' with the support of an NGO and contraceptive marketers, said an organiser, adding that there was a plan to bring the female sex workers operating from kothis, bungalows and those giving services on call to such a forum in the future. At the inaugural session, the participants were told that since the late 1980s a large proportion of HIV cases had been detected in men, particularly those who had worked abroad.
At present, based on cumulative cases, a higher proportion of people have been infected through sexual transmission, but the epidemic is expanding rapidly among injecting drug users, with a reported prevalence of 26 per cent among drug users in Karachi alone.
A recent round of surveillance has shown an overall 6.4 per cent prevalence among male transvestites and 0.9 per cent prevalence among male sex workers. However, the rate among female sex workers continues to be low, informed Sindh Aids Control Programme officials.
The country manager of the UNFPA, Daniel Baker, said that the main objective of the advocacy workshop was to discuss and develop appropriate strategies to address the sexual health needs of female sex workers in the country.
The experts will help in developing models of good practices in providing culturally appropriate sexual health promotion strategies to sex workers, he added.Experts, including a sociologist from Bangladesh working as the UNFPA consultant at Myanmar, Habib-ur-Rehman, highlighted the risks and needs of sex workers and asserted that work needs to be done to build the capacity of government bodies, service providers, NGOs and donors in addressing these needs.
The subject of the first day included FSW work in Karachi, field work methodologies, boyfriends/husbands of FSW and peer education.
The workers were told that development of prevention skills and implementation of strategies should come from them, as it was the only viable way to increase personal and organisational capacities of the sex workers who were at risk of STIs and HIV.
An expert told Dawn that NGOs find it difficult to reach sex workers or to implement programmes that address their risk and prevention issues adequately.
Society reflects what it is....
ReplyDeleteIf sex workers exist, it means they are soliciting the members of the society itself.
Then who's encouraging????
It's the member of the society ::: IT's MEN
So change is within your hands...
ITS too bad as we belong to religion of islam which strickly phrohibits these things.In order to get rid of this we must come together and must destroy the objectives of the western people
ReplyDeleteHitler punished members of his party with death if they were catched on homosexuality. Read about in the book Adolf Hitler Founder of Israel by Hennecke Kardel.
ReplyDeleteThey are just helping the society, one way or other. If shouldn't shun their efforts as indirectly they are helping our society in terms of health hazards. If you want to condemn, then condemn those NGOs and government agencies who should be helping those unfortunate women by showing them light, encouraging them to leave their occupation and join the mainstrain society.
ReplyDeleteHow come no religious organisation ever mention these parts of the society and reach them to help them get out of it ... ?
My dear friends, AOA.
ReplyDeleteThe issues are resolved from roots, not by cutting branches.
We have so many means to increase one's demands / khwahish, Yet we are making it harder to get them satisfied by legal/Sharai way of Nikah.
Promote Marriages/Nikah, even Polygamy(multiple Nikahs) if one can support them, this is THE ONLY WAY for one who want to live a straight path. Cut down all expensive CUSTOMS. See the result.
Yes we could not stop the habitual perverts, AGREED.
the simple solution, just punishment with hunter as order by Sharia.
ReplyDeleteonce time they punished all by 80 hunters, never thought again this type of rubbish.
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ReplyDelete