BY: EMMANUEL CHIMA DAVID

From our last blog, we now understand how circumcision helps in the fight against new HIV infection by at least 60%, particularly in socio-culturally religious countries like Nigeria. However, despite the protective benefits offered by male Circumcision, there has been an increase in new HIV infections among men who engage in transactional sex with men (MSM) in Nigeria as they are most at risk to this new HIV infection.

In this edition, we’ll learn additional strategies to curb HIV spread/ transmission amongst male sex workers in Nigeria.

Male sex workers remain a marginalized and stigmatized group of professionals in Nigeria that are often associated with high risk of HIV spread/transmission due to factors like unprotected sex, multiple partners and limited access to healthcare services. Moreover, societal discrimination and legal frameworks further increased the challenges faced by male sex workers thereby hindering their ability to access prevention and treatment services.

To effectively reduce the HIV infection rate among male sex workers in Nigeria, it’s important to address the structural barriers that hinder their access to healthcare services by proffering actionable solutions. These actionable solutions include advocacy, war against stigma and discrimination within the healthcare space, assurance of ethical confidentiality and privacy, also the provision of sociocultural-relative competency care features that are uniquely tailored to the needs of the Nigerian male sex worker…