Dr Kevin Harvey, senior medical officer in the Ministry of Health's National HIV/STI Control Programme, says the decriminalising of commercial sex work, buggery and the strengthening of other legislative framework could better assist the ministry in providing HIV services to at-risk groups.
Speaking during a Gleaner Editors' Forum, held yesterday at the newspaper's North Street head offices, Harvey said the ministry had difficulty providing services to commercial sex workers and homosexuals because both activities were illegal in Jamaica.
"These legislative framework have, to some extent, led to persons falling under these legislation being unavailable to us," Harvey said.
Complicated
"For example, the buggery act and commercial sex workers, all of those things are illegal, so how do you legally provide services for persons who are engaged in illegal activities?"
He added: "There must be some kind of room where we can have a kind of a decriminalisation where we can find a common path to work with those persons, even if the activity remains illegal."
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