A growing number of women from poor countries consider an engagement as sex workers in the wealthy industrialized countries as their only chance for making a decent living. This forces them into a variety of dependencies and obligations. They often accept high risks to their psychological and physical wellbeing. For these reasons migrant prostitutes have to be considered as an important target group for preventive measures, despite of an overall low HIV-prevalence among non-drug-using female prostitutes in Western Europe. Coercive methods in public health care against prostitutes cannot be justified neither from an epidemiological point of view nor from the point of view of efficacy considering the high mobility of the target group. Street work in cooperation with native speakers combined with confidential and free of charge counselling and medical care has proved to be effective to reach migrant prostitutes also in Germany.

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education Germany HIV Infections Human immunodeficiency virus infection psychological aspect methodology Preventive Health Services human wellbeing industrialization statistics Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Western Europe Humans counseling female preventive health service risk factor Review Risk Factors high risk population Conference Paper prostitution organization and management infection prevention health education migration Transients and Migrants acquired immune deficiency syndrome