Transgender people, sex work and HIV

[lovingboth]

Someone recently gave a presentation to a semi-official body on transgendered people and sex work. Most are doing sex work to pay for gender reassignment surgery.

However she said that around 70-80% of mtf sex workers were HIV+ and gave several reasons for this, including being more vulnerable to taking more money to have (anal) sex without a condom.

She also opined that there was a very high rate of HIV infection in mtf people generally (much higher than the about 17% for gay men in London).

Now, it may just be the people I know, but this sounds extremely high to me. Had I been at the meeting, I'd have been asking 'where's the evidence for that?'

Not least because AIUI most of the surgeons who do gender reassignment won't take HIV+ patients.

Thoughts?

Comments

[a-musing-amazon.livejournal.com]

Can't comment on HIV rates amongst trans-people doing sex work (since I don't really know any). If your numbers are right then there seem a lot less proportionally here than there are in US metropolitan areas: there have been a number of studies of HIV rates in those groups which some ppl have then generalised to the t* population as a whole.

5000 post-ops is the figure 'officially' banded about as the number likely to be affected by the gov.t's proposed new legislation. I think there is some wish not to put the number too high, so I doubt if it bears too much detailed examination.

And, yes the TV program I was thinking of was Paddington Green.