African sex workers lack food for taking HIV drugs during COVID-19

KIGALI, Rwanda: As the coronavirus spreads in Africa, it threatens in multiple ways those who earn their living on the streets — people like Mignonne, a 25-year-old sex worker with HIV, foreign media reported.

The lockdown in Rwanda has kept many of her customers away, she said, so she has less money to buy food. And when she doesn’t eat, the antiviral drugs she takes for HIV can bring on pain, weakness and nausea, or even make her pass out.

“Yet it’s equally dangerous when you don’t take the drug,” Mignonne said in an interview. “You will die.” Similar challenges exist elsewhere in Africa, which has the world’s highest burden of HIV.

Studies have shown that food insecurity is a barrier to taking the drugs daily and can decrease their efficacy, affecting not only sex workers but anyone where food — or the money to buy it — is scarce.

Among sex workers in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, “most who are living hand-to-mouth have been lamenting that it’s making it difficult to adhere to treatment,” said Talent Jumo, director of the Katswe Sistahood, an organisation for sexual and reproductive health.