Prevention among sex workers will be!

"Nothing but contraceptives and testing save you from AIDS. There is also prevention from coronavirus which cannot be neglected".
Irina Maslova Leader of the sex worker rights movement ‘Silver Rose’, ‘Astarta’ Foundation

Problem

The introduction of restrictive measures, reducing the flow of clients, closing jobs, lack of work – all of this has greatly affected the lives of sex workers.

Despite the epidemic and the bans, we made this decision for ourselves when we began to understand that most sex workers were leaving, stop working due to restrictive measures, but this does not mean that clients stop walking. This does not mean that we should stop the prevention of sexual transmission of HIV.

Solution

The new measure, which we foresaw to include in the motivation package not only condoms and lubricants, the ability to do an HIV test, but also masks, gloves, and antiseptics. It is important to maintain stability: you can come to our office, we go to the outreach ourselves. Many sex workers lost their jobs (women with children, transgender people, migrant workers), so supporting food sets is a vital necessity, people just need to eat and give food to their children.

Result

The flow of appeals fell by 80%, but over the past 2 months, only 289 people received a minimum package of services, 87 sex workers were tested for HIV, and out of 29 people of sex workers clients were tested for HIV.

The newly detected HIV-cases – three new SRs … They are all migrants. Now we will try to resolve the issue with diagnostics and ART initiation therapy (most likely, it will be not free). Over 95 food packages delivered to those  who are in need …

HIV prevention cannot be stopped. Sooner or later ‘COVID’ will leave, and our ‘beloved’ HIV will remain …