Condoms in Bahrain: Sex Workers’ Only Protection Against HIV/AIDS

Condoms in Bahrain: Sex Workers’ Only Protection Against HIV/AIDS
Suad Hamada – 14 January, 2011 –

Savatri used a condom for the first time in her life when she was forced into prostitution a few months ago. Fortunately, the 34-year-old Indian woman was instructed by the managers of the brothel to insist that her clients wear a condom – the only preventive method against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV, in use by sex workers in Bahrain.

Sex workers’ last hope for proper medical care was lost at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna last July when Bahrain officially declined to provide licenses to sex workers as a measure to reduce HIV/AIDS cases. Although sex work remains one of the risk factors in increasing HIV/AIDS rates, Bahrain rejected the proposal without hesitation out of fear of clashes with our conservative society, Dr. Somaya Al Jowder, head of the National AIDS Program, tells me.

“Condoms were compulsory in my unexpected profession, although I never used them with my husband, who thinks I’m working as a domestic worker at a house in Bahrain,” Savatri recalls from jail while serving a four-month sentence, not for prostitution but for violating residency regulations in Bahrain.

“I was locked inside the brothel after a man convinced me to run away from the family I used to work for as a maid. He promised me better income, but I received nothing for my service and my one-month nightmare of free sex ended when the police raided the house and rescued me with the other females,” Savatri remembers. …more