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| India-Pakistan |
| SciAm: Sex workers organized as a collective to fight Aids with Gate's money. |
| 2006-03-30 |
| The Prostitutes' Union Among the poor and most vulnerable, Smarajit Jana has found a way to slash the incidence of HIV--by organizing sex workers as any other labor collective... [..] "I strongly believe that for a program to succeed, the subjects have to adopt its goals as their own," he explains. They have: the sex workers run the HIV program themselves. Jana persuaded them to form a growing collective that now includes 60,000 members pledged to condom use. It offers bank loans, schooling for children, literacy training for adults, reproductive health care and cheap condoms--and has virtually eliminated trafficking of women in the locale. Best of all, the project has kept the HIV prevalence rate among prostitutes in Sonagachi down to 5 percent, whereas in the brothels of Mumbai (Bombay) it is around 60. Other sexually transmitted diseases are down to 1 percent. Jana now works with CARE in Delhi, assisting other social workers in similarly transferring their HIV prevention programs to the people they serve. Such community-led interventions have become integral to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in its five-year, $200-million effort to combat AIDS in India. [..] |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #1 Hats off to the Gates. I'm sure there's a million nay-sayers out there, but the Gates' are out there doing something for no other reason than they believe it's the right thing and because they can. Keep it up!! |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-03-30 14:32 |