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The focus of the Women’s Health Center’s work in the past few years

Originally posted on 3 February, 2010

In the past year, our main work has consisted of raising awareness on HIV/AIDS prevention through outreach; reducing fear; raising awareness of safety and protection; and providing free women’s health checks, as well as free HIV and drug tests.

This year we will continue with last year’s work. Wuhan city stretches out over a wide area, and there are still some low-end districts that we have not yet covered. This year we have to completely cover all of Wuhan’s low-end entertainment districts. I hope that when our colleague Chen Haiyan returns to us, her first promise will be: “Ms Liu, I promise that this year we will cover all of the low-end districts, to the point where our outreach work will have a coverage rate of 100 percent!” OK, that’s the first task for Chen Haiyan when she returns back to work.

As for our student volunteer, Lan Xin, this year the OB/GYN nurse’s office will be your focus! I hope you will be able to direct this office well. I can only provide social power and financial support. The questions of medical expertise and enlisting the support of gynaecologists to conduct exams are entirely your responsibility. Whatever plans you think are best, after we’ve discussed them together, don’t delay in turning them into reality.

There’s one student volunteer I haven’t yet mentioned: you will serve as the marshal for our main tasks, with responsibility for implementation of our activities.

And as for me, I’ll be responsible for maintaining the network and contacts we have built with the girls, for our contacts with others, and for managing our overall work.

Our areas of focus for this year are: reproductive health, treatment of sexually-transmitted diseases, and HIV testing.

Our plan for 2011 is: founding subgroups among sex workers for the prevention of AIDS, the activities centre for the girls, and study of work safety (it’s only with two to three years of foundation-building that we begin work on these projects, since only with the necessary conditions in place can success be possible).

Our plan for 2012 is: to spread and support existing sex worker’s groups for the prevention of AIDS (with the goal of helping them to exist independently and to grow healthily)

In 2013, if everything goes smoothly, we will lay down a new plan of action.

The health center was started a few years ago by a woman who moved to Wuhan from the countryside, saw several of her friends go into sex work, and decided that there needed to be more services to help these women to stay safe. She employs three full-time nurses, and has a small army of volunteers — after meeting her, I’m not surprised, she was one of the sweetest, kindest, and at the same time most inspiring people I’ve met.

My friend wanted to learn more about their work, so they offered to take as along on one of their nightly trips to hand out condoms and information in one of Wuhan’s many red-light districts (we later found out that the nurse who brought us along was supposed to be on her night off, but she came in anyway so that we’d have a chance to see some of their work while my friend was still in town). Although there are sex workers in every part of the city (including right next to Wuhan University, where I live), on this trip we took a cab to another part of the city, and there met up with another woman who works in the area and knows the neighborhood well. She took us around to the local shops that the girls work in, first to five or six that were on a dark side street, off of a busy alley bustling with evening shoppers and snack stalls, then to another two shops on another side alley, and then finally we took a cab to another quiet street where another four or five shops were open for the evening.

We started the walk fairly late (around 8 pm), and since business for the evening had already begun, we moved relatively quickly so as not to get in the way of their work (on a normal night, most of the girls work from around 7-8 pm to 2-3 am). With a friendly smile, the nurse from the health center handed out condoms, booklets with information on safe sex and staying healthy, and encouraged the girls to attend an upcoming event that the health center is holding. In that part of the city, she told us, the health center isn’t as well known as in some other parts of the city that they visit more often (and where the girls know to expect them and are happy to see them when they go on their evening rounds), and the reactions were mixed — some of the girls seemed suspicious, some weren’t interested at all, and others seemed curious. We were introduced as volunteers at the health center, but having two foreigners come along probably made our group stand out even more. But from where I was standing, even though a few people were suspicious, on the whole the nurse from the health center seemed to inspire trust and confidence, and there seemed to be a sense of camaraderie among the women.

Since we couldn’t stay for very long in each shop, there weren’t a lot of opportunities to talk to the girls directly, but even our short walk around one small district gave a glimpse into how tough their lives must be. Most of the girls are apparently from the countryside, and have come to Wuhan and ended up in this line of work for a wide variety of reasons. Some have been tricked into coming here, some have been raped and then shamed or blackmailed into sex work, and others have chosen sex work either as a complement to a day job that they can’t get by on, or simply as a way to earn more money. As in every country, there’s a huge range in salary between low-end and high-end work. The nurse from the center told us that at the kinds of places we visited, customers generally pay 100 rmb per visit, and that about 20-30 rmb of this will go to the girl. At the low end, monthly salaries are apparently around 2000-3000 rmb per month, but can be anywhere up to 80,000 rmb per month for high-end work. Most of the girls we met looked relatively young, in their late teens or early twenties, and the nurse from the center said that she would guess the average age is around 18 or 19, with some girls beginning work at as young as 14.

The shops that the girls work in are small, dirty shops that are easily spotted from the street (in my own neighborhood, I counted three on my 15 minute walk home from work earlier this week). Most of the shops have a sofa or a few chairs near the door, where the girls watch TV or play cards as they wait for customers, and a thin sheet or thin walls separating off a back section with beds. In a few of the shops, the girls sat huddled around electric heaters or small coal heaters to stay warm, and in other shops they kept their legs warn under a shared blanket.

Although prostitution is officially illegal in China, it’s widespread, and those who work in the sex industry compose one of the most vulnerable groups in society. Whatever one’s opinion may be on how a country can best use its policy tools to protect the men and women who work in the sex industry, the work done on the ground by groups like this women’s health center in Wuhan is incredibly important. I left feeling inspired, and in awe of their courage and dedication.