LAGOS, Dec 6 (AFP) - Venetia, a 26-year-old sex worker in a Lagos brothel, knows how to get AIDS and how to avoid it.
"I use condom because condom is good. With condom, I no get AIDS. It is good for my health and good for your health," she told a prospective client.
"Without condom, you no get sex. It is our rule," she added, firmly, her colleagues sitting giggling on the sofa nearby.
Unfortunately, this picture is not typical in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, where ignorance about sex and HIV/AIDS is widespread and already 3.5 million people are infected.
Estimates suggest there are around 80,000 sex workers plying the oldest trade in brothels across Nigeria, serving an average of four clients per day. And, while condom use is increasing, almost half of sex workers do not insist on protection.
As a result, infection rates are high. In a survey in 1995, 35 percent of all sex workers in Nigeria were HIV positive, when the national average was 4.5 percent. The national average now is 5.8 percent.
According to a new survey published here this week, the largest-yet study of sex worker attitudes in Nigeria covering 2,578 sex workers around the country, a majority are aware of AIDS but knowledge of how it does and does not spread is low.
"Although almost all the sex workers were aware of AIDS, their knowledge of HIV transmission and risk factors for HIV was low... Only two-fifths knew that non-condom use increases risk," said the report, carried out by a Nigerian health sector organisation, the Society for Family Health (SFH).
As in most places around the world, the reason most women go in to prostitution in Nigeria appears simple. The typical sex worker in Nigeria earns 14,400 naira (130 dollars) a month, the survey found, almost three times the national minimum wage.
With higher prices offered for unsafe rather than safe sex, this also explains, in part, why so many sex workers are prepared to engage in sex without a condom - increasing the likelihood of getting the disease and then spreading it to the general population.
"You will just risk your life to collect that money," one sex worker from the central city of Jos told the survey team.
Among those aware of the risks, the methods used to avoid AIDS were often grossly inadequate.
Twenty-four percent said they used condoms for "casual customers", but not for their "regulars" or "boyfriends", distinguishing between loving and casual relationships.
Thirty-five percent said they took antibiotics regularly, to ward off the disease.
Eighteen percent said they examined the client facially before engaging in unprotected sex, believing, wrongly, that they could tell by looking at someone whether or not they carried the virus.
More said they believed God would in some way protect them.
"I no go fit catch am in Jesus name," (I will not catch it as a believer in Jesus) said a prostitute in the southwestern city of Ibadan.
"It is only God that gives protection," said another in the southern city of Benin. "Whether you get medicine for body or you no get, na only God," (Whether or not you have medicine, it is only God that will help you) said another.
Ignorance about HIV transmission was found to be widespread but higher in northern Nigeria where cultural and religious beliefs restrict discussion of sex and limit general education for women in particular.
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