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The article discusses the factors associated with condom use among female commercial sex workers in India. Findings showed that knowledge and awareness of HIV/AIDS was related to an increase in perceived vulnerability of contracting HIV/AIDS. Moreover, perceived vulnerability of unprotected sex with clients increased the confidence of sex workers about condom use efficacy. It was also found that outcome expectancies were related to condom use self-efficacy. However, clients' objections to use condoms on the basis that it was uncomfortable and inconvenient or that it reduced sexual pleasure, posed a serious constraint.

The objective was to examine the relative vulnerability of different categories of female commercial sex workers (CSWs) to HIV infection. In this study, we considered the consistent use of condoms as an effective preventive measure against HIV infection. Research has shown that condom use is predicted by several cognitive and environmental variables such as AIDS knowledge, perception of vulnerability, perception of outcome expectancies, perception of social support, peer-group comparison, and condom use self-efficacy. Therefore, to examine the relative vulnerability to HIV infection we examined the variance in factors listed above among three categories of female CSWs in the city of Chennai in India. The study found significant differences among the three groups of CSWs on the following factors: AIDS knowledge, perception of vulnerability, perception of social support, and peer-group comparison. The study will have wide implications for designing HIV/AIDS prevention interventions, public health campaigns and policies that are targeted at the vulnerable CSW population in Chennai and other places in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a HIV/AIDS intervention project which aims to disseminate awareness information about the disease among sex workers in India. The project promotes work on community development as well as interventions at various levels to manage crises and environmental challenges faced by sex workers. Information about the reduction in HIV infection incidence as well as an increase in condom usage is presented.

The article focuses on sex work and trafficking and the Sonagachi Project HIV/AIDS intervention program in Calcutta, India. According to the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report published by the U.S. government, majority of people are trafficked for sexual reasons and most are women. It mentions that poor employment opportunities, lack of education and less support from men make women easy targets of human trafficking. The Sonagachi Project is to spread awareness about HIV among sex workers.

The connection between identity and health communication has been amply documented in communication research. How an individual frames one self with respect to and in conjunction with one's interpersonal relationships and material and communicative structures shapes one's identity. This in turn shapes how one enacts the self given the relationships and available contexts one is embedded in, all of which have a significant influence on how one communicates about and negotiates health and illness. This article examines how members of a community of sex workers in Kalighat, in the city of Kolkata in India communicatively construct their selves with respect to their prevalent cultural indices and available structures, and how enunciations and enactments of sex worker selves as "mothers first" influence localized patterns of HIV/AIDS communication and related work practices. Sex worker narratives suggest that mainstream assumptions and identity labels that depict sex workers as incapable mothers and the concurrent HIV/AIDS practices imposed on them need to be questioned and transformed in order to effect positive changes in health and HIV/AIDS negotiation practices among members of this marginalized community. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National governments and state agencies, international agencies of western governments, and local and international non governmental organizations (NGOs) are engaged in providing information and designing and implementing programs to arrest infection rates and address the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS. In fact, the state is a major player in garnering and allocating resources for information dissemination involving specific interventions based in policies. How is gender incorporated in HIV/AIDS related policy of the state? What do policies espouse and how have local agencies adapted policy directives or otherwise? Using qualitative primary data, I address these questions by examining three main strands in the discourse around HIV/AIDS information dissemination in India. The first manifests itself in the 'medicalization' of the issue by adopting a western lens to formulating messages through the involvement of international agencies based primarily in the developed world. The second strand of discourse emanates from primarily donors; bilateral and multilateral agencies and western government institutions, applying their global prescriptions (including providing technical experts) sometimes based on ideology, to adopt programs that are supposedly aimed at arresting infections. The third strand of discourse focuses on the tools/mechanisms for information dissemination with varying emphasis involving local struggles amongst organizations which include conflicts and cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]