20 male sex workers to fight HIV in Kenya
Male sex workers living with HIV and AIDS will soon join the fight against the disease in Kenya, the magazine Identity Kenya reports.
Twenty sex workers will be trained as peer educators so they can tell other sex workers how to avoid HIV infection.
The training, scheduled for this month, was organized by a Nairobi-based group for male sex workers, Health Options for Young Men on HIV and AIDS, or HOYMAS. Funding is from the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).
“There is a lot of stigma being gay; add on top being a sex workers and you face double discrimination,” said one male sex worker.
The estimated overall HIV infection rate in Kenya is 6.3 percent, according to the United Nations AIDS Report of 2010. Among MSM in Kenya, the rate is estimated to be much higher:
- 15.2 percent, according to a 2010 report by Dr. Chris Beyrer of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and others;
- 43 percent, according to a 2008 report by the Foundation for AIDS Research;
- 24.5 percent in Mombasa and 10.6 percent in Nairobi, according to a 2009 study published in The Lancet.
Under Kenyan law, male homosexual activity is punishable by up to seven years in prison.
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