AEGiS-14IAC: IVth meeting of chilean sex workers: For the right yo have rights.

14th International AIDS Conference

Barcelona, Spain - July 7-12, 2002

IVth meeting of chilean sex workers: For the right yo have rights.

Int Conf AIDS 2002 Jul 7-12; 14:(abstract no. D11088)

Gonzalez HG
Fundacion Margen, Santiago, Chile

BACKGROUND: Records compiled on field in Santiago, from 200 women performing sex work, show that most of them are living under extreme poverty conditions and don't have access to suitable medical assistance, which makes this group highly vulnerable to acquisition and transmission of HIV/AIDS. Actually, the increase of HIV transmission among women performing sex work has been confirmed.

METHODS: A two-days long meeting was performed with representatives of sex-she-workers organizations coming from 13 cities of Chile. During the meeting, four steps were experienced: at first, a shared diagnosis of the situation of women in sex work; second, team work in order to develop working proposals; third, elaboration of the meeting final document; the final step was the election of the representative of sex-she-workers.

RESULTS: 105 representatives of 13 cities of Chile took part in this meeting expressing the hugh effort of sex-she-workers to get organized and to work for their sexual health and for the prevention of HIV/AIDS. We have made a big step towards the construction of a diagnosis that enables the development of preventive activities among this group.

CONCLUSIONS: As the results of this IVth meeting show, what is required is the active incorporation of sex-she-workers in a process of education and becoming aware of the significance of taking care of their sexual health and of developing actions tending to ameliorate the whole social, cultural and economic difficulties that increase their vulnerableness towards AIDS.

Keywords: AEGIS, Prostitution, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, HIV Infections, HIV Seropositivity, Chile, Human, Female, transmission

020707
D11088