The Lancet medical journal has revealed that 37% of commercial sex workers in Uganda have HIV thus Uganda sex workers have one of the highest rates of HIV infections in the world. The Lancet is an international medical journal.
The four-year survey funded by the World Bank and the United Nations Population Fund ranked Uganda as one of the countries where sex workers had a higher HIV prevalence than other women.
The Lancet revealed that some 99,878 female sex workers in 50 countries (14 in Asia, four in Eastern Europe, 11 in Latin America and the Caribbean, one in the Middle East and 20 in Africa), were subjects in the study conducted between January 1, 2007 and June 25, 2011.
Results of the study, which was led by Dr. Stefan Baral of the US-based John Hopkins School of Public Health, were released on Thursday.
The study assessed the burden of HIV compared to that of other women of reproductive age and found that the burden is disproportionately high and concluded that there is an urgent need to scale up access to quality HIV prevention programs for sex workers.
Sex workers in most of Africa had substantially higher levels of HIV than other women, posting more than 20% of prevalence.
Of all the prostitutes in the 50 countries, those in sub-Saharan Africa had the highest HIV prevalence.
Only two of the African countries studied, Egypt and Madagascar, had zero HIV rates among women who sell sex.
Leave a Reply