Commercial sex work, drug use, and sexually transmitted infections in St. Petersburg, Russia

Sevgi O. Aral, Janet S. St. Lawrence, Roman Dyatlov and Andrei Kozlov

Social Science & Medicine, 2005, vol. 60, issue 10, 2181-2190

Abstract: The relationships between commercial sex work, drug use, and sexually transmitted infections (STI) in St. Petersburg, Russia were assessed using qualitative research methods and an examination of existing research, surveillance and epidemiology data. The rapid assessment methodology included in-depth qualitative interviews with key informants, naturalistic observations of commercial sex work and drug use sites, geo-mapping, and a critical review of the available surveillance, epidemiology, and sociological data. Patterns of commercial sex work and drug use in St. Petersburg are described. The existing surveillance data attributes infections to injected drug use over and above any other risk category. However, examination of the clinic and epidemiology data suggests that HIV infection may be increasing fastest among groups that are acquiring HIV through sexual transmission. Targeted screening studies of STI and HIV morbidity among populations that are not included in the surveillance algorithm are needed, such as commercial sex workers, street youth, and the homeless. Sexual history taking to better characterize the proportion of cases that result from sex between male partners would also be helpful.

Keywords: Commercial; sex; workers; Drug; use; Sexually; transmitted; infections; HIV; Russia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(04)00515-5
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:60:y:2005:i:10:p:2181-2190

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().