Working for Change 351
The community can help
Community members can help sex workers to organize for
safer working conditions. You can:
• demand laws that punish those who exploit sex workers.
This includes brothel owners, pimps and middlemen, police,
clients, and drug pushers.
• pressure police to stop violent treatment of sex workers.
• work for laws that encourage
condom use by clients of sex
workers. For example, in
Thailand, the Ministry of Health
requires sex workers to use
condoms. If they do not, the
brothel can be shut down or
have to pay a fine. This law has
helped sex workers to insist
upon condoms. This protects
the sex workers, the men who
pay them, and their wives.
CONDOMS
REQUIRED
for your
safety
and ours
You can also work to prevent
children from being sold or
forced into sex work:
• Talk with parents in your community about the dangers of
selling girls into service in other countries.
• Provide help, such as jobs, counseling, and a place to stay, for
children who run away from their families. With your help
they will not be forced to sell sex to survive.
To the health worker
You can make the biggest difference in the life of a sex worker by helping her to
get the care she needs:
• Give the same respectful care to sex workers as you give to others.
• Learn to diagnose and treat STIs. See the chapter on “Sexually Transmitted
Infections and Other Infections of the Genitals,” page 261.
• Learn which medicines provide the most up-to-date, affordable treatment, and
try to keep a supply available.
• Find a regular and adequate supply of free or cheap condoms for your
community. Make them available at health clinics, local shops, bars, cafes, and
from outreach workers.
• Make sure health services are available, including family planning, abortion, and
free or low‑cost treatment of STIs, testing for HIV, and drug abuse.
Where Women Have No Doctor 2012