Street-based Female Sex Workers and Their Vulnerabilities: A Study in the Municipalities of Bangladesh

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 79.3 million people have been infected with HIV since the pandemic began; 36.3 million died, and nearly 37.7 million people were living with HIV by the end of 2020. The risk groups, including sex workers and injecting drug users, remain to be expanding gradually around the globe. Street-based sex workers (SBSWs) and their clients might have contributed to the increasing rate of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) among people in Bangladesh and even worldwide. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used in this research. SBSWs sexual conduct, perceptions of STIs and HIV/AIDS, knowledge of HIV/AIDS and prevention methods (i.e., condom-usage behavior) were studied in this research using a cluster sampling methodology. Data shows that the median age of sex workers is around 25 years old, which represents the youth group of people. The study came with the findings that a majority (75%) of the female sex workers were married at one point of their lives; and 86% of them had sex with clients within the last 24 hours where 41% of them never used condoms, while half of them mentioned that the customers were uninterested in using condoms during sexual intercourse. All these findings clearly indicate the linkage and sources of multiple forms of vulnerabilities.