India: Community Empowerment Key to Turning Tide on HIV
November 28, 2012 – Sex worker Akram Pasha remembers when his hometown of Mysore, India—an idyllic southern tourist hub known for a Maharajah’s palace and its many universities—stood on the brink of an explosive epidemic. In 2004, a new community-based organization in the city, called Ashodaya Samithi, conducted a first-ever survey of local sex workers and found an HIV prevalence of 25%. “We were shocked,” said Pasha, who now serves as director of Ashodaya Academy, which trains sex workers in HIV prevention, leadership and community mobilization. “It could have been any one of us. We knew we had to do
