•Women also turned to alcohol following disclosure of sex work to close family and friends.
•Although alcohol and drug use is embedded in the sex work environment, the levels in Kibera are the highest ever reported in Kenya.
Image: COURTESY
Nearly all sex workers in Kibera slum are hooked on alcohol and bhang, a survey by the Kenya Medical Research Institute suggests.
Kemri said 95 per cent of the female sex workers are abusing alcohol and 61 per cent are on bhang.
Half of the alcohol users are “very high-risk” drinkers, Kemri said, based on interviews with them.
Often referred to as binge drinking, high-risk drinking for women is characterised as consuming more than one drink per hour or three to four drinks in an evening, daily.
Kemri said most of the women claimed alcohol enabled them to navigate the sex work environment by alleviating their shyness, relaxing them and giving them the courage to negotiate with clients.
“There is an urgent need for preventive and curative interventions to address the high prevalence of substance use among female sex workers residing in high-risk urban informal settlements in Kenya,” the researchers said.
The study was led by Dr Linnet Ongeri-Kioi, a consultant psychiatrist working at the Centre for Clinical Research in Kemri.
Linnet and her colleagues administered questionnaires to 301 sex workers in Kibera slum in Nairobi and 98 per cent of them reported abusing at least one psychoactive substance.
“The most used substance was alcohol, with 95.6 per cent of the study population reporting use in the past year. Of these, 50.2 per cent met criteria for very high-risk drinkers,” she said.
Reported current use was 61.5 per cent for bhang, 47.2 per cent for miraa, and 30.9 per cent for tobacco.
Factors independently associated with harmful alcohol use included earning a higher monthly income of more than Sh6,000.
Women also turned to alcohol following disclosure of sex work to close family and friends. The study, conducted between April and August 2017, is published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.
It is titled, Prevalence of Substance Use and Its Association with Sociodemographic and Behavioural Factors among Women Who Conduct Sex Work in Kenya.
Although alcohol and drug use is embedded in the sex work environment, the levels in Kibera are the highest ever reported in Kenya.
Nationally, most studies put current substance abuse among sex workers at about 34 per cent.
In 2019, local non-profit Partners for Health and Development in Africa, interviewed 1,003 sex workers around Nairobi and only 29.9 per cent reported harmful alcohol use, 21.5 per cent harmful amphetamine use and 16.9 per cent harmful bhang use.
The Ministry of Health says Nairobi has about 40,000 female sex workers.
Alcohol use is associated with increased sexual risk behaviours, including reduced condom use, increased prevalence of HIV and STIs as well as reduced uptake and adherence to HIV treatment.
(edited by Amol Awuor)