Ace Africa trains Bungoma sex workers – Weekly Citizen

Research has shown that the Trans-Africa Highway which transverses through Bungoma in Kenya to Uganda via Malaba is a major commercial sex corridor due to the high number of foreigners who use the highway.

A majority of the men and women are traders, sugar industry workers, truck drivers, transiting refugees or people escaping from conflict zones in the region.

In Bungoma county migratory labour and subsistence agriculture based livelihood systems are common features of employment. The seasonality of incomes coupled with the need to seek work elsewhere leads many people to become commercial sex workers on the main highway, where there is a real and present risk of sexually transmitted infections and HIV.

In 2018, statistics show that women aged between 15 and 24 years are at the highest risk of contracting HIV besides being a group that constitutes the bulk of new infections. This group is mostly found in schools and has challenges with HIV related stigma.

The Kenya HIV 2018 estimates report released by the government demonstrated a gradual decline in HIV prevalence nationally. However, in Bungoma county prevalence rose from 2.8pc to 3.2pc.

ACE Africa has engaged key persons in strategic interventions to reduce the risk of HIV among men traveling along the Tran-Africa highway.

Berth Onyango, the assistant project coordinator said ACE Africa has mapped over 300 commercial sex workers along the highway and trained 60 as peer educators, both men and women, in an effort to mobilise truck drivers and migrant populations in the sex ‘hot spots’ to adopt behaviour change approaches intended to reduce the risk of HIV infection. The sex hot spots include bars, sex dens, hotels among others.

These strategies include one to one discussions with clients, distribution of condoms, referral for treatment and provision of care and support.

In May 2012, ACE Africa entered a partnership with Aphia plus Western (a USAID funded initiative) to implement an HIV and AIDS Behavior Change Communication Project in Bungoma county, Kenya. The project was intended to contribute to the reduction of risk of exposure to HIV among most at risk persons.

Through this approach, ACE has directly reached 3,361 sex workers and hopes to reach more than 3,836 commercial sex workers.

Through the project, ACE Africa has striven to link various interventions such as behaviour change communication and counseling and testing with prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), improved nutrition’s and antiviral therapy (ART) thereby creating a continuum of prevention and care services.

This has been done with support from the government and other partners from the private sector and civil society organisations.

Bungoma being a border county, it is grappling with the issues of transactional sex, involving key populations like long distance truck drivers and commercial sex workers.

Bungoma county hosts 32,000 people living with HIV, out of which only 27,000 are said to be on care.