Prostitution

Prostitution is the sale of sexual services, such as oral sex or sexual intercourse, for money. A person selling sexual services is a prostitute, a type of sex worker. In a more general sense of the word, anyone selling their services for a cause thought to be unworthy can be described as prostituting themselves.

Medical situation

Since prostitutes tend to have large numbers of sexual partners, prostitution has often been associated with the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as AIDS.

Related Topics:
Sexually transmitted diseases - AIDS

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Typical responses to the problem are:

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• banning prostitution completely
• introducing a system of registration for prostitutes that mandates health checks and other public health measures
• educating prostitutes and their clients to encourage the use of barrier contraception and greater interaction with health care

Some think that the first two measures are counter-productive. Banning prostitution tends to drive it underground, making treatment and monitoring more difficult. Registering prostitutes makes the state complicit in prostitution and does not address the health risks of unregistered prostitutes. Both of the last two measures can be viewed as harm reduction policies.

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In Australia where sex-work is largely legal, and registration of sex-work is not practiced, education campaigns have been extremely successful and the non-intravenous drug user (non-IDU) sex workers are among the lower HIV-risk communities in the nation. In part, this is probably due both to the legality of sex-work, and to the heavy general emphasis on education in regard to Sexually Tranmitted Infections (STIs). Safer sex is heavily promoted as the major means of STI reduction in Australia, and sex education generally is at a high level. Sex-worker organisations regularly visit brothels and home workers, providing health information and free condoms and lube, and other forms of support.

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The encouragement of safer sex practices, combined with regular testing for sexually transmitted diseases, has been very successful when applied consistently. Prostitution appears to have little effect as a vector of STDs when safer sex practices are applied consistently. However, in countries and areas where safer sex precautions are either unavailable or not practiced for cultural reasons, prostitution appears to be a very active disease vector for all STDs, including HIV/AIDS.

Related Topics:
Safer sex - HIV/AIDS

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