MEXICO CITY, 4 August 2008 (PlusNews) - 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.
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