Americans, BOTUSA study female sex workers

| Wednesday July 4, 2007 00:00

 

The report was written by researchers from the International Education and Training Center on HIV (I-TECH) from the University of Washington in the United States, with support from BOTUSA and funding from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).   Matshelo Community Development Association (MCDA), based in Francistown, assisted with the study. 

Since little is understood about sex workers in Botswana, what risks they take and why, this assessment is one of the first to take a comprehensive look at these issues.
In addition to identifying HIV risks and access to health services for FSWs and their clients, the assessment looks at suitable interventions to reduce HIV/AIDS transmission in both groups.

Interviews with sex workers, health care workers, NGO representatives, and groups of men were conducted in Ghanzi, Gaborone, Selebi-Phikwe, Francistown, Letlhakane and Kasane in 2006.

There were common threads that ran through interviews with FSWs, including gender roles, poor education, limited work opportunities and low wages that created the path to sex work for women in Botswana. Participants commonly attributed entry into sex work to failure of male partners to provide for them adequately and to a lack of female earning power.

The assessment also found that there are few organizations that target sex workers in Botswana, according to Anjali Sharma, an I-TECH researcher. 

The sex workers and health care providers believe that access to basic health care was good for sex workers, even if that health care was not targeted at them particularly.
'The biggest challenge to services is the unwillingness to test the law. People fear that helping sex workers is tantamount to illegal activity,' Sharma said. 'Also, the mix of transactional, part-time and commercial sex makes it difficult for people to accept that FSWs have special health and prevention needs compared to women in the general population,' he argued.