COVID-19 driving sex workers online
Health officials shift gear to maintain low HIV prevalence
Published:Monday | December 13, 2021 | 12:08 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
Social-media platforms are emerging as a new frontier for female sex workers amid curfews and gathering restrictions implemented to curb the coronavirus outbreak.
Dr Alisha Robb-Allen, acting senior medical officer of the HIV/STI/TB Unit - Health Promotion & Protection Branch in the Ministry of Health & Wellness, confirmed with The Gleaner that while the pandemic adversely impacted opportunities for face-to-face interactions, sex workers have been migrating to the Internet.
The Disaster Risk Management Act, which outlaws movement by unauthorised persons beyond 10 p.m., however, did not mean that sex workers were not still actively engaged in transactional exchanges.
In other words, though ‘Back Road’ in Portmore or Ripon Road in Kingston have lower-than-usual traffic than in the pre-pandemic era, that did not mean they weren’t offering their services elsewhere.
“So it’s no longer just going to a venue and waiting for potential customer to turn up. People now come to you, instead of you being at those places,” Robb-Allen saud,
In response to that shifting business model, the ministry’s team, as well as other agencies, has had to ramp up strategies to meet and engage these women in the ongoing public education drive on safe sexual practices, and the provision of condoms and lubricants.
“We have had to adjust our strategies to ensure that we continue to meet that population, and we have been doing. There is still more work that needs to be done,” the senior medical officer said.
The Family Planning Services Division, which is entrusted with spearheading the prevention aspect of the overall strategy, has been working in collaboration with Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL) to develop online strategies to meet this evolving target audience.
That engagement is key to maintaining the gains in HIV prevalence among female sex workers, which has fallen from 12 per cent in 1990 to two per cent in 2017.
The impressive statistical plunge is no reason to relax, Robb-Allen warned.
“We should be looking to continue the strategies, because in stopping strategies, you basically go back to ground zero. So you have to maintain the strategies ... ,” she said.
Robb-Allen said that this was achieved through hard work by several agencies, meeting with sex workers in their comfort zones and building capacity to navigate sex.
The key players were the regional health authorities, through their behaviour change communication officers; targeted intervention officers, and community peer educators.
Non-governmental organisations such as JASL, ASHE, Children First, and Eve For Life have also been part of the outreach to this key population group.