By BRIAN HATYOKA –

MORE than 50 Female Sex Workers (FSWs) have graduated as peer educators to help halt the spread of HIV/AIDS especially among the key populations of sex workers.
The FSWs who were drawn from Chirundu, Livingstone, Sesheke and Kazungula borders were trained by Corridors of Hope in partnership with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFA).
They have since changed their behaviours and they would be educating their fellow peers in busy places at night to practice safer sex.
Livingstone District Commissioner Omar Munsanje said the HIV prevalence among the sex workers population was 10 times higher than the general population and hence it was important to target such people.
Mr Munsaje said most FSWs were engaging in unprotected sex, inability to negotiate for safer sex including non-use of condoms, lack of access to appropriate health services, social stigma, criminalisation, social violence, drug and alcohol abuse which were contributing to the higher HIV prevalence rate.
He said this in a speech read for him by Livingstone district medical community health officer Cliff Hara during the graduation ceremony for 56 FEWs.
One of the FSWs who was also supposed to graduate, Carol Liwema, died two days before the graduation ceremony.
“Sex workers as a sub-population are at a higher risk of contracting and spreading HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs).
Therefore, controlling or preventing HIV infections in FSWs is an important strategy of halting the spread of HIV in the general population,” Mr Munsanje said.
Corridors of Hope Chief of Party Joseph Kamanga expressed concern at the increasing number of both female and male sex workers in the country.
Mr Kamanga said his organisation was not a reformist but that it was merely encouraging sex workers to do their activities in a safe and dignified manner by not spreading HIV/AIDS infections to other people.
Vanesa Siandula, a graduating peer educator living from Kazungula border, said she was currently encouraging sex workers to practice safer sex to mitigate the spreading of HIV/AIDS infections.
Ms Siandula, who is popularly known as ‘Queen Mother’, said she stopped breastfeeding when her child was two months so that she could engage in sex work to earn an income.
Pamela Shawa, a graduating peer educator from Chirundu border, said she had changed her phone sim cards so that men should not contact her anymore after her life changed.
Ms Shawa said she was married for two years but she left her marital home to start engaging in prostitution to earn an income.