Health News
Malaysian city mulls STD screening for foreign masseuses
Mar 18, 2010, 7:04 GMT
Kuala Lumpur - A Malaysian city in the eastern state of Sarawak on Borneo is proposing a ruling that would require all foreign masseuses to undergo mandatory screening for sexually transmitted diseases, a news report said Thursday.
The move was sparked when officers from the Miri city council recently discovered that several foreign women working in massage parlours around the city had tested HIV-positive, the Star newspaper reported.
Following complaints of an increasing number of these parlours offering clients sexual services, the city council said it plans to subject the masseuses to a blood test every six months.
'Foot massage centres are mushrooming all over our city,' Mayor Lawrence Lai was quoted as saying. 'There are those that are licensed, but there are also many operating illegally.'
'[We're] very worried that these places may become centres for spreading sexually transmitted diseases,' he said.
Lai said the council would also conduct surprise checks on massage centres to weed out undocumented workers and businesses operating without valid permits.
Miri, like most other cities in Sarawak, has a large foreign worker population coming mostly from neighbouring Indonesia and the Philippines.
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