Brothels help prostitutes stay healthy

Oct 27, 2008, 3:09 GMT

Sydney - Prostitution is regulated differently in Australia's six states, allowing researchers like Basil Donovan to compare how the industry operates under different rules and the implications for public health.

Donovan, from the University of New South Wales, found that sex workers in his state had the lowest incidence of sexually transmitted disease.

If the health of those who work in the industry was the only consideration, he argues, other jurisdictions should fall into line with the biggest state and decriminalize prostitution and deregulate the industry.

'The prevalence of gonorrhoea in sex workers in Sydney is as close as you can get to zero,' Donovan, an internationally recognized expert in sexual health, said.

In his view, persuasion works better than regulation and this explains the sex industry's low rate of sexually transmitted diseases in New South Wales.

In the neighbouring states of Queensland and Victoria, prostitution is still a criminal offence and brothels have to be licenced. Donovan says this has driven much of the industry out onto the street and made it harder for health programmes to reach prostitutes.

'It's very difficult to run health promotion programmes and to access those women to ensure they are seeing doctors,' he said.

In New South Wales, by contrast, the law does not obstruct conveying the safe-sex message.

Letting the industry regulate itself has had clear benefits in terms of best practice. Within a few years of the first case of HIV/AIDS infections emergence in New South Wales in the early 1980s, the industry declared condom use mandatory in brothels.

'It probably saved thousands of lives and stopped HIV/AIDS becoming a generalized epidemic,' Donovan said.