POPLINE Document Number: 115039
Author(s):
Caldwell P
Source citation:
HEALTH TRANSITION REVIEW, 1995;5 Suppl:167-72.
Abstract:
Prostitutes were identified, interviewed, and their health risks assessed in a 1992 study in Lagos, Ado-Ekiti, Benin, Port Harcourt, and Kaduna. A complementary study was conducted in 1993 in Lagos to gain additional information upon the recruitment of prostitutes and the economics of the industry. 50% of the prostitutes sampled were under age 25 years and more than 75% were under age 30. The author notes the lucrative nature of prostitution in her discussion of the supply of prostitutes. All of the women were afraid of sexually transmitted diseases, with 40% reporting having been infected, but very few feared AIDS. The great majority claimed to know no one who had died of AIDS or was infected with HIV. 33% consistently suggest condom use to their clients, while 33% of clients raise the issue to the prostitutes. However, it may be that the majority of sexual intercourse occurs without condom use. This is so partly because managers, pimps, and boyfriends fail to pressure the prostitutes and their clients to use condoms, and the management does not provide them. Thailand is in the midst of a major AIDS epidemic. Commercial sex, an important source of infection in the country, is part of the life of a significant proportion of Thai men and forms a greater proportion of all premarital and extramarital sexual relations than in Nigeria. To check the spread of HIV infection in Thailand, the government has mandated condom use in brothels with the threat of business closure for non-compliance. The responsibility is placed upon the management to provide condoms, to pressure their staff to use them consistently, and to give women unqualified support in rejecting clients who refuse to use them. Transferring the Thai model to Nigeria is considered.