KAMPALA – In a bid to empower marginalized women in Uganda, the Alliance of Women Advocating for Change (AWAC), a Civil Society organisation that works with female sex workers is providing several essential services to the sex workers community, that would rather fear to access them from health centres due to stigma-related issues.
Through their Drop-in Centre, AWAC provides essential services including HIV tests, counselling and treatment, SRHR, cancer screening, post-abortion care, and Legal to tens of thousands of sex workers.
Speaking at their National Annual Sex Workers’ Dialogue on Monday, Ms. Macklean Kyomya – Executive Director, AWAC noted that their clients have got dynamic and unique issues, but it is not very easy for them to access a service just like the other people.
“So drop-in centres help them to receive targeted and responsive services tailored to their needs. For example, a female sex worker who has experienced gender-based violence can walk into AWAC through our toll-free line, access counselling or get GBV support services, maybe treatment, but also through our referral pathways.”
“We also work with other partner organisations, who are readily available 24/7 to provide services to female sex workers who have experienced gender-based violence, like Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum, Action Aid, UGANET, among others,” she added.
Through their partnership with the Uganda Cancer Institute, Kyomya revealed that they are running a project supported by the Medical College of Wisconsin, specifically to do counselling, screening and referrals for treatment of cancer.
“But also it’s a campaign that we are running looking at prevention – that don’t wait to see the signs. We realised very many sex workers don’t screen but even when they do so, they don’t go beyond. Some of them are screened and given a report that they have the Human papillomavirus (HPV) virus but they don’t go to the facility because there is a lot of stigma.”
“So most people, we realised through this project that once they are told that you have HPV, that’s the day they die, they feel like there is no tomorrow, I have cancer, so I’m going to die, someone who was thinking of planning to build a house in two years or take their children to school, they will not do it.”
“So, we thought it was important for us to empower our grassroots female sex workers to adopt the prevention mechanism that – try every six months go for the screening, get to know your body, and reach out to the service. We’ve got a focal person at Uganda Cancer Institute, just to help ease the process of the queues and bureaucracy so that we are able to be motivated to go and access those services,” she told the press.
At the event, they invited Nakasero Blood Bank and mobilised their members to donate blood which can be given to Uganda Cancer Institute to support women like female sex workers, and women with multiple intersections when they are in a crisis.
AWAC team lead noted “We are in a dilemma whereby our safe space has huge numbers who come to access the services because the place is very strategically located, we have very many slums and hotspots around us, so they can easily walk in.”
According to Kyomya, they serve 18,453 female sex workers for HIV prevention services, HIV testing services – 14,960, for those on prep – 12,994, Art-related services – 583, post-abortion care services – 673, Gender-Based Violence – 2915 (from 2020), cervical cancer-related services – 68 and many more.
Their premises currently being on sale, Kyoma is worried that if they all of a sudden move to a different place, there’s going to be a discontinuity of the services – there by calling their clients, organisations and central government to aid them purchase it to enable smooth continuity of serving Ugandans.
“We really need support from different partners, our donors, our friends, our members, everybody that loves and cares about the work we do. We really call for support to save AWAC. We are looking for 20,000 US Dollars or 20,018 US dollars. If we get that money, definitely all these clients will continuously access the services without any disruption.”
