Sex workers living with HIV

Sex workers living with HIV
For sex workers living with HIV, the stigma surrounding HIV is compounded by the
stigma associated with sex work, which often further diminishes their access to essential
HIV services. Sex workers living with HIV require access to the standard of HIV
treatment, care and support services on a non-discriminatory basis. For sex workers who
test positive, support and quality counselling that addresses potential discrimination and
loss of income should be readily available. Education and encouragement about healthy
living and positive prevention56 can help protect their sexual and reproductive health and
well-being, avoid other sexually transmitted infections, delay HIV disease progression, avoid
development of resistant strains of HIV and opportunistic infections, and prevent further
transmission of the virus.
Increased access to antiretroviral therapy creates the need and opportunity for long term,
sustainable strategies that engage sex workers in life-long positive prevention. The success
of antiretroviral therapy in reducing illness and prolonging life can alter people’s perceptions
of risk, including by sex workers and their clients, underscoring the need to couple
treatment scale-up with the simultaneous expansion of access to focused HIV prevention
services. Antiretroviral treatment programmes, along with reproductive health and family
planning services, should promote correct and consistent condom use to reduce further
possibilities for HIV transmission