|
"Let sex workers play
their part"
The
Star (www.thestar.com.my)
(04/07/05)
They can help in fight against AIDS
KOBE (Japan): Former sex worker Tonette Lopez
says people like her are some of the best fighters against AIDS in Asia but
that they are being ignored by governments and international agencies even
as an explosion of the deadly disease looms.
One in four new infections occurs in Asia,
home to more than half the world's people, and 1,500 die in the region each
day. The disease has spread to all provinces in China, while the number of
Indian HIV/AIDS patients are second only to South Africa.
Lopez, a 30-year-old who worked in bars in
her native Philippines for three years and has founded an NGO for sex
workers, accused major international agencies of being out of touch with the
very communities they were trying to reach.
“Sometimes because they are the funders, they
think they know what's best for us, when in fact it should be the other way
around,” she said on the sidelines of an international AIDS conference here.
“We're the ones in contact with the
community, not them,” she added.
“They're only in their offices, sitting down
and waiting for their reports. And sometimes reports are not true.”
Though she acknowledged that agencies can
provide a badly needed structure for prevention efforts, she urged them to
make more of an effort to include the sex workers, who as peers are able to
reach out to their communities most effectively.
“There should be greater participation from
us – and they should put us first.”
The UN estimates 8.2 million people are
infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Asia, about 5.1
million of them in India. The Chinese government says there are 840,000
patients in China.
Worldwide, about 39 million people have
HIV/AIDS, including 25 million in sub-Saharan Africa.
Commercial sex is one of the main forces
behind the spread of HIV in many countries in Asia, where the United Nations
says that 12 million people could be newly infected in the next five years
if prevention programmes are not intensified.
Though the infection rates of AIDS are
highest among injecting drug users in Asia, the huge number of people
involved in buying and selling sex makes it a critical concern.
“How we deal with the sex trade will have a
decisive effect on HIV epidemics in Asia and the Pacific,” Cheryl Overs, an
activist with International HIV/AIDS Alliance, told a session of the
conference, which ends tomorrow.
“The effort must be massive in scale and as
diverse as the region itself.” — Reuters
 Back to
News Page |
