{"id":8764,"date":"2012-04-16T11:15:53","date_gmt":"2012-04-16T18:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=8764"},"modified":"2012-04-16T11:15:53","modified_gmt":"2012-04-16T18:15:53","slug":"condoms-in-bahrain-sex-workers-only-protection-against-hivaids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=8764","title":{"rendered":"Condoms in Bahrain: Sex Workers\u2019 Only Protection Against HIV\/AIDS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Condoms in Bahrain: Sex Workers\u2019 Only Protection Against HIV\/AIDS<\/strong><br \/>\nSuad Hamada &#8211; 14 January, 2011 &#8211; <\/p>\n<p>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 &#8211; the only preventive method against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV, in use by sex workers in Bahrain.<\/p>\n<p>Sex workers\u2019 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCondoms were compulsory in my unexpected profession, although I never used them with my husband, who thinks I\u2019m working as a domestic worker at a house in Bahrain,\u201d Savatri recalls from jail while serving a four-month sentence, not for prostitution but for violating residency regulations in Bahrain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI 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,\u201d Savatri remembers. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewip.net\/contributors\/2011\/01\/condoms_in_bahrain_sex_workers.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8230;more<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"igit_tsb_button\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crookedbough.com%2F%3Fp%3D8764&amp;text=Condoms+in+Bahrain%3A+Sex+Workers%E2%80%99+Only+Protection+Against+HIV%2FAIDS&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Condoms in Bahrain: Sex Workers\u2019 Only Protection Against HIV\/AIDS Suad Hamada &#8211; 14 January, 2011 &#8211; 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=8764#more-'\" class=\"more-link\">more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2306],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8765,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8764\/revisions\/8765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}