A call to decriminalise their profession did not have the happy ending sex workers were looking for at the 21st International Aids Conference in Durban this week.

Decriminalisation was proposed by several delegates as a way to stem infections.To support its call, the Cape Town-based Women's Legal Centre released a damning report on the "relentless" abuse of sex workers at the hands of police . The report details hundreds of incidents, including police asking sex workers to perform oral sex."The harassment is one of the most difficult aspects of their lives," said centre attorney Stacey-Leigh Manoek.story_article_left1Celebrity Aids activist Sir Elton John supported the call , saying: "If we leave these people behind, the disease will spread further and further and further. If you give people love and compassion and include them - like drug users, like sex workers - you leave no one behind."Without health services and support for marginalised groups, he said, the "campaign to end Aids will be a disaster".Research from the Lancet edition on sex work shows that decriminalising sex work globally would have the greatest effect on the course of the HIV epidemic, averting between 33% and 46% of HIV infections in the next decade.The Department of Health has previously said that between 6% and 20% of all HIV infections in South Africa can be linked to sex work.In a 2013 study involving 2,180 sex workers in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, 70% in Johannesburg tested HIV-positive.The study - by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in conjunction with the University of California, the Anova Health Institute and the University of the Witwatersrand's Reproductive Health and HIV Institute - was released last year, and emphasised the need for sex workers to receive antiretroviral therapy.Last month, the Health Department, with donor funding, began offering sex workers Truvada, a pill that if taken daily and used with safer sex practices can help to reduce the risk of infection.At one point sex workers at the conference broke out in song about " prep" (for pre-exposure prophylaxis ), as Truvada is popularly known: "Prep, prep Motsoaledi, thank you for giving us prep" - referring to Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi.But without police coming to the party, the health plan would not work, said Chris Beyrer, head of the International Aids Society.story_article_right2"Police serve a function of undermining the HIV response. The ministry of health is there. The police are not there. They need to be engaged."He said the best example of the clash was in the use of condoms: police confiscated these as evidence to be used against sex workers, so they refused to carry them.The Women's Legal Centre said almost 20% of sex workers requesting assistance from it reported that they had been physically assaulted by policemen. Others reported rape."Some of us have been repeatedly raped by both the police and our clients," said a worker from KwaZulu-Natal.Western Cape police communications officer Andrè Traut denied that police abused sex workers.Sweat, an NGO that advocates decriminalisation, highlighted the lack of progress.Director Sally Shackleton said: "We are here to protest against what has changed since the last international Durban Aids conference: Nothing. We are still criminalised."..