5 August 2008
Mexico City — Roadside bars, truckers and sex workers have long been seen as one of the most dangerous combinations for the transmission of HIV, with truckers often blamed for spreading the virus.
But research presented at the International AIDS Conference held in Mexico City this week, suggests that truckers have been misunderstood.
Surveys conducted along some of East Africa's major transport corridors have found that truckers often make up the minority of clients at highway stops.
Alan Ferguson, a researcher with the US-based non-governmental research organisation, Constella Futures, was part of a team that looked at HIV vulnerability along the transport corridor linking Kenya's port city of Mombasa with the Ugandan capital, Kampala. Their research revealed that along this route, only 30 percent of female sex worker clients were truckers.
A similar study conducted along the highway from Kampala to Juba in Southern Sudan, found that 28 percent of sex worker clients were truckers. The rest of the clients came from a wide range of occupations including local businessmen, teachers and healthcare workers.
Ferguson said it was time for awareness programmes to "go beyond" truckers and involve the communities surrounding highway stops.
In West Africa, communities surrounding border posts were just as vulnerable to HIV as truckers and female sex workers, noted Dr Justin Koffi, executive director of the HIV/AIDS Corridor Project, a regional initiative supported by UNAIDS, the World Bank and USAID that is targeting people using the highway between Cote D'Ivoire's economic capital, Abidjan and Lagos, Nigeria.
According to Koffi, studies have found that HIV prevalence rates in border communities are twice as high as national averages, but that awareness programmes remain weak in these areas.
The families of truck drivers were also neglected by existing prevention programmes, according to Dr Asif Altaf of the International Transport Workers Federation. "What about the families? The wife back home? These programmes need to address the family factor otherwise the cycle will continue," he warned.
The life of a trucker
But truckers are still vulnerable. The Constella Futures study found that along the route between Mombasa and the Uganda border, an average of 2,400 trucks park overnight at 39 "hot spots", which attract an estimated 5,600 sex workers.
Ferguson noted that as drivers become aware of the risk of engaging in unprotected casual sex, some have opted to maintain semi-regular sexual partners along the transport route. Since this involved some level of trust and intimacy, condom use was less likely.
Studies have found that a significant number of workers in the road transport sector have continued to engage in unprotected casual sex, despite being aware of its dangers. Possible explanations for this behaviour include high levels of fatalism resulting from the dangerous nature of their jobs, widespread alcohol and substance abuse, and stigmatisation of this group.
UN Special Envoy for Africa, Elizabeth Mataka warned against labelling truck drivers responsible for spreading HIV. She noted that it was poor working conditions that made truckers vulnerable.
Altaf of the International Transport Workers Federation confirmed that truck drivers had no proper working conditions, received low wages, and worked alone and away from home for long periods of time.
Another contributing factor was the long delays drivers experienced at borders while waiting for customs to clear goods. In the West Africa corridor for example, the delays at border posts ranged from days to months.
In such instances, Altaf pointed out, sex – a "normal physiological phenomenon" – was a means of coping.
"I'm from Bangladesh and people there say truckers are bad people because they are always having alcohol...but what else do you have?" he asked. "When you're on the road, it's sex by the side of the road and bars by the side of the road."
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
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This research shows no importance and has contributed not at all.As I am concern, public sex is all round the world.People do it and there no complaint or because this is Africa? Try and do research on how Africa will obtain a great development,reduce the low educational rate and good business environment.please conduct another research and leave african along.
Bobby D. Bunyan
It matters because of the spread of HIV/AIDS, not because people are having sex. Do you want there to still be people in Africa in a hundred years? If everyone gets HIV/AIDS and dies, who does that help? You don't think this is important?
Thank God somebody makes since! How is this article important you ask? It's an important and relevant article NOT because it has to do with sex/sex workers/people living their life the way they want to. It's because these practices in a continent where 22 million adults and children are infected with HIV/AIDS (of a global total of 33 million) are grossly PROBLEMATIC. As a result, this impacts Africans and especially those living in Sub-Saharan Africa more than any other population in the world! The number of infections, which grows exponentially every year, will directly impact and possibly stunt the growth… [Read Full Text]
Thank God somebody makes since! How is this article important you ask? It's an important and relevant article NOT because it has to do with sex/sex workers/people living their life the way they want to. It's because these practices in a continent where 22 million adults and children are infected with HIV/AIDS (of a global total of 33 million) are grossly PROBLEMATIC. As a result, this impacts Africans and especially those living in Sub-Saharan Africa more than any other population in the world! The number of infections, which grows exponentially every year, will directly impact and possibly stunt the growth… [Read Full Text]
I had ignored this article thinking it was only about sex and African poverty. Yes it was very enlightening moreso when the common thinking was that only truckers frequent these ladies of the night. If moe than 60% of the "clients" are not truckers whom we percieve to be sex starved because of the long periods they stay way from their families then we have a problem. This has nothing to do with being African but of the gravity of the risk to some innocent woman back home. Aids campaign through article should be encopuraged so that we all know… [Read Full Text]
WOW!!!! I was really starting to become concerned after reading the first two responses to this article. Those two seemed to be VERY unenlightened. The following responses seemed to be more in line with conventional thinking on the incredible HIV/AIDS problem in Africa. My God! If all Africans had the cavalier "it's somebody else's problem" expressed by the first two respondents, how can the rest of Africans and the world be expected to take the problem seriously? Thank goodness for the growing interest and education about the problem. Although "not necessarily" the views… [Read Full Text]
Well I find it quite concerning that no one seems to have a real problem with thousands of truckers having unprotected sex on a regular basis. I mean this IS serious- this is what spreads AIDS. I am priviledged to come from a community in England where AIDS is quite rare but I still don't know many people who would be prepared to have sex unless protection was involved....
Seems like nobody cares about this release. Who cares if people have sex on dead bodies? Sex rounds are avaliable to any adult with a name to keep. Who cares? PLease, take this matter away from your site as it has overstayed it's welcome. Tell me about important things about Africa. Things like the passing away of Mugabe might make news.