Sex Workers In Kolkata Research Articles

Determination of Gag Subtypes of HIV Type 1 Detected among Female Sex Workers in Calcutta, India

HIV-1 subtyping is important to study the changing scenario of genetic variation. The gag-based heteroduplex mobility assay (gag-HMA) was developed and evaluated as a powerful and reliable technique for identifying the HIV-1 group M subtypes A to H and the circulating recombinant forms (CRFs). To study the subtype distribution of HIV-1 strains from the eastern part of India, we used the gag-based HMA, followed by the sequencing and phylogenetic analysis. Blood samples from HIV-1-seropositive female sex workers in Calcutta were subjected to gag-HMA. The most prevalent subtype was found to be the C type, among which the C4 subsubtype was prevalent. However, a number of nontypable C strains were found in gag-HMA. Phylogenetic analysis revealed the discrete nature of the C strains and no monophyletic cluster was noticed. This result might indicate a growing tendency of variations among the HIV-1 type C strains circulating in eastern India.

Polymorphism of HIV-1 gag (p17) gene from female sex workers in Calcutta, India

HIV-1 subtype C is the major subtype in India as evidenced from the analysis of specific regions within envelope and gag gene. The matrix protein (p17) of HIV-1 which is involved in several functions like the viral RNA transport, nuclear localization, assembly of pre-integration complex into host nucleus has been used to study the strain diversity among female sexworkers in Calcutta. The gene encoding for the HIV-1 matrix protein, p17 was amplified by nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) from blood samples of HIV-1 seropositive female sex workers (FSW) in Calcutta, India. Genes of twenty-two samples were sequenced and the phylogenetic analysis with different global strains showed that the majority (seventeen) was clustered with Indian type C. A few samples were found to be close to other C subtypes isolated from South Africa, China and Myanmar. The comparison of Calcutta samples with the samples from other regions of India along with other non-asian subtype C sequences clearly revealed a different cluster of Indian sequences. The two samples, cal 242 and cal 709 was found to be the most divergent type and showed close relatedness with African C subtypes.

Review of the Film Born into Brothels

Children, Youth and Environments 15(1), 2005 Review of the Film Born into Brothels Rachel Silvey Department of Geography,University of Colorado Boulder, USA Citation: Silvey, Rachel. (2005). “Review of the Film Born into Brothels.” Children, Youth and Environments 15(1): 362-363. Comment on This Film Review Produced and directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski. In English and Bengali, English subtitles. Distributed by ThinkFilm. Running time 85 minutes The Oscar-winning film Born into Brothels focuses on the lives of children whose mothers are sex workers in Calcutta, India. The cinematography is beautifully crafted, drawing the viewer into the rich colors and textures of the daily lifeworlds of the low-income community members at the center of the film. The film follows Zana Briski, a highly regarded western photojournalist, through her journey of discovery of the children who live in the red light district. She sees the brothel youths’ vulnerability to violence and abuse, their limited opportunities for education, and the high likelihood that they will be caught in cycles of sex work, but she recognizes and appreciates the children’s creativity and human agency. Zana develops a strong affinity for the children and her affective ties seem to run deep with each of them individually. As a photographer, she wants to help them tell their stories through photographs that they themselves take. The film follows the children through their photography class with Zana and explores the images that the children collect in the context of film footage detailing the struggles between parents and children, and sex workers and their clients. The brothel is clearly not a pleasant place in which to grow up. The producers are to be commended for the vivid and nuanced view they provide of these lives and this place. A viewer leaves the film with the sense that he/she has actually visited the brothel community, heard the voices of the children, and breathed the air in Calcutta. Despite these many strengths, the film’s storyline does seem to reinforce a colonial attitude toward the poor Indian children, and to present Zana as the self-sacrificing, kind-hearted woman who works to save them. The irony of this is that Zana’s Review of the Film Born into Brothels 364 goals and methods are clearly aimed at challenging negative stereotypes about these children (if not their mothers), and she has directed a great deal of energy into helping the children enter boarding schools and teaching them to use photography as a creative medium. Given that these goals are such a central feature of the film, it could have had a more critically self-reflexive stance toward the discursive colonization and reification of racial/national historical privilege that comes along with such a storyline. We never hear what the mothers think about the sex work that they do, nor do we know much about the various qualities of other low-income jobs or communities that might help us put this story into a broader context. Recent research (Kempadoo and Doezema 1998) has found that many women move in and out of sex work depending on a variety of factors, including the availability of other jobs, relative wage rates, and their stage in the life cycle. This research challenges the view (usually imposed from outside) that sex work is necessarily worse than other forms of low-income, highly exploitative labor. Moreover, while Zana is busily volunteering to save the kids from their futures as sex workers by enrolling them in boarding school, we see that at least several of the children and their mothers want to live together. It is crucial to ask how the film’s storyline obscures, and thus unwittingly contributes to, the broader global structural inequalities that silence children’s voices and disenfranchise women in India. References Kempadoo, Kamala and Jo Doezema, eds. (1998). Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition. New York and London: Routledge. Rachel Silvey is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her interests involve migration, Indonesia, feminist theory, critical development studies, and the politics of transnationalism. Her expertise is in the gender dimensions of migration and economic change in Indonesia. ...

Sex workers and the cost of safe sex: the compensating differential for condom use among Calcutta prostitutes

Anecdotal evidence suggests that sex workers who use condoms face large income losses because clients have a preference for condom-free sex. This has important implications for AIDS policy. We estimate the compensating differential for condom use employing data from a random sample of sex workers in Calcutta. We rely on a natural experiment—the nonsystematic placement of sex workers in a safe sex information program—to identify the relationship between condom use and the price for sex. We find that sex workers who always use condoms face large losses of between 66% (FIML) and 79% (IV).

HIV type 1 subtypes circulating in eastern and northeastern regions of India.

Genetic subtyping has been a powerful tool in tracking the global spread of HIV. To determine the HIV-1 subtypes circulating in eastern and northeastern regions of India blood samples were collected from female sex workers in Calcutta and intravenous drug users (IDUs) in Manipur. Fifty-four samples from Calcutta and 25 samples from Manipur were analyzed for HIV-1 subtyping by heteroduplex mobility assay (HMA). Twenty-six samples from these regions were sequenced. HMA and sequencing of the samples from these regions revealed subtype C as the major subtype, circulating within both eastern and northeastern regions. In Manipur, subtype ThaiB was also detected as the second major subtype. Some of the IDUs from Manipur were found to be dual infected with subtype C and ThaiB.

Health-seeking strategies and sexual health among female sex workers in urban India: Implications for research and service provision

This paper presents and discusses selected findings from a study of health-seeking strategies in relation to sexual health among a group of female sex workers in Calcutta, India. Background information on sex work and sexually transmitted disease in Calcutta is followed by the presentation of findings pertaining to women's understandings of (sexual) health, treatment-seeking and service utilisation. In the urban context where health services are readily available, patterns of initial treatment-seeking are shown to be generally (biomedically) appropriate, but subsequent “non-compliant” therapeutic practices give cause for concern. Conventional approaches to the study of “health-seeking behaviour” are reviewed in the light of these findings and questions raised about the appropriateness of approaches that focus on initial choice of treatment type and/or assume processes of health-seeking to be determined primarily by cultural “beliefs” about illness. Inherent biomedical and culturalist biases in the orientation of such research are shown to produce an analytic neglect of the dual influences of material life conditions and people's perceptions of health, rather than illness, upon health-related strategies. Recommendations are made for operational research and policy formulation on the provision of effective sexual health services, and implications are drawn for the scope of interventions and applied research directed at improving sexual health.