KOLKATA, India, Dec 19, 2006 (AFP) - Sex workers in one of Asia's largest red light districts here are being shown how to use female condoms in a bid to contain the spread of HIV-AIDS, a first in India, officials said Tuesday.
A three-day training programme has been started in the West Bengal state's capital Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta.
"The condom for women can be of great help to sex workers. It will help them to protect themselves from HIV-AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases," said Anjali Narayan, deputy director of West Bengal's AIDS control programme.
The programme will be launched in another eight of India's 29 states next year.
A condom normally costs 50 rupees (about one dollar), but will be made available to sex workers for three rupees, the official said.
The centuries-old Kolkata brothels are home to more than 10,000 sex workers, of which about five percent are estimated to have HIV-AIDS.
Activists said awareness about HIV-AIDS was low among the sex workers.
India has the largest number of HIV-AIDS cases in the world, with 5.7 million cases, the Geneva-based UNAIDS says.
India's National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) says 86 percent of HIV infections are from sexual transmission, and several studies found that prostitutes account for nearly 30 percent of the total.
But a report published in October by Britain's Royal Society of Medicine said India was making mistakes by assuming that HIV was being spread overwhelmingly by sex and especially by prostitutes.
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