Low Price, Waiving Condom Use Raise HIV Risk in Brazilian FSWs

Low Price, Waiving Condom Use Raise HIV Risk in Brazilian FSWs

Author: Mark Mascolini

11 October 2011

Charging a lower price, having a sexually transmitted infection (STI), allowing clients not to wear condoms, and other variables independently raised the risk of HIV infection in a study of more than 2500 female sex workers (FSWs) in Brazil.

Brazilian FSWs have a 15 times higher risk of HIV infection than women in the general population. To identify HIV risk factors, researchers recruited 2523 FSWs by respondent-driven sampling, in which one recruited person asks others to join the study. Respondent-driven sampling is used to recruit study participants in hard-to-reach populations. The researchers made sampling weights proportional to the inverse of network size. To generate global results for the 10 cities, they calibrated data by population size.

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