Public Health in a Prostitute Area (PHPA)

In close proximity to our Health Centre in North Kolkata, there is the prostitute area of Sonagachi. About 50’000 people are living there in extreme poverty and cramped space; most of them are “commercial sex workers” (CSWs). The main reason for initiating the PHPA program in 1998 was the fact that the CSW hardly left their district to obtain medical care due to their stigmatization and social marginalization. Over the years, the program has been well established in the district, and is widely appreciated and accepted thanks to the PHPA team’s remarkable work.

The PHPA program offers basic health care directly in the Sonagachi area. Medical exams are carried through, patients receive counselling and attendance, and homeopathic medication and contraceptives are handed out. The PHPA not only provides basic care but also stresses educational and preventive work. This includes personal counselling on nutrition, hygiene, HIV/Aids and other sexually transmittable diseases. In addition to this, there are regular public information presentations and collective events, for example group discussions or theatre performances addressing and imparting health themes with the CSWs as actors. During the consultations, social support of the CSWs is stressed next to medical attendance. In this spirit the program organizes activities and events for the CSWs, like meetings and excursions, to offer the women an occasion to forget their every day life for a moment and be amongst themselves.

Through all these activities, the program has become an important social and medical institution in the Sonagachi area, not only for the CSWs but also for their children and for other residents of the area. These conditions form a solid basis for plans to advance the program: in the future we will try to implicate further players of the prostitution trade in order to expand the program sustainability and additionally advance aids prevention.