Female sex worker HIV prevention projects: Lessons learned from Papua New Guinea, India and Banglade

The set of case studies in this collection emerged from a session entitled Best Practices in Female Sex Worker Projects held at the Fourth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Manila, October 1997. The three projects selected for case studies represent a range of situations, geographical locations, problems and solutions. Two of these, Sonagachi and SHAKTI, involve brothel-based sex workers in South Asia. The Transex project works with club or street-based sex workers in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea. SHAKTI includes both brothel and street-based sex workers in Bangladesh. In each case, situations differ considerably. Sonagachi is a large, densely populated red light district in the centre of Calcutta, housing 5,000 sex workers, of whom two-thirds are Indian and one-third hail from Bangladesh and Nepal.

This publication is part of the Best Pratices Collection.