Director General of the Ghana Aids Commission, Dr. Kyeremeh Atuahene, has announced a shift in the modus operandi of sex workers in the country.
In times and event presently, sex workers line up the streets of cities in search of clients.
But according to Dr. Kyeremeh Atuahene, this system is gradually fading out as many have found other alternatives to give sexual favours in a discrete manner.
Engaging JoyNews this week, Dr Atuahene noted that some sex workers have evolved to ‘high-class’ where they now host their clients in luxury apartments. He indicated that others who view their bodies as a source of income also run such business in their homes.
“Now when you go out there you see young people, even some at the tender age of 10 on the street. Now many of them don’t solicit on the street. They do it on the internet. So you have hookup where a young lady and young men will go to a client at an agreed place.
“We have some who also operate from a home-based kind of setting. We have highclass sex workers who live in luxury apartments and their clients are people of substance in society who actually patronize their services. So we have all these things happening in Ghana,” he added.
According to him, data up to 2015 shows an increase in the sex worker population size.
“In 2011, the sex worker population size estimate stood at about 50,000. The last time we did it, it was almost 70,000. That is 4 years after,” he said.
The conversation on sex workers erupted amid talks on the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country.
There is the likelihood of a mass spread of the Human Immune Virus (HIV) in the country, according to the Ghana AIDS Commission, as over 100,000 individuals are oblivious to contracting the virus.
Director General of the Commission, Dr. Kyeremeh Atuahene, noted that the figure represents over 28% of HIV patients in the country.
“More than 28% of people living with HIV still do not know their HIV status because they have not tested. That represents about 100,000 people. They are spreading it unknowingly and that is not the best.”
He expressed concern over the trend of multiple partners by both men and women.
“Today, it is a common place to talk about young women having multiple sexual partners.
We are having women not having just multiple sex partners which is a major risk in the first place, if they are not protecting themselves, but we have more and more young women going into sex work,” he noted.