bengaluru indias sex workers had played a key role in bringing down hiv infections and their services can now be utilised to contain the spread of covid19 says a noted physiciandr sundar sundararaman who has worked in hiv field for more than 30 years urged the government to coopt sex workers and deploy them on the ground to undertake tasks like the ones done by asha accredited social health activist and anganwadi workershad sex workers not cooperated in the last 15 years we wouldnt have brought down hiv at all the independent consultant told ptiin fact today we are talking about covid warriors heroeswhy are we forgetting hiv warriors and hiv heroessex workers were in the frontline who made sure new hiv infections were mitigatedduring the ongoing lockdown period sundararaman said loss for sex workers who are in every single geography is going to be very huge because of social distancinglike asha and anganwadi workers they have the capacity and skill to gather and disseminate information and their services can be also be utilised for similar initiatives to curb the spread of covid19 and positioned as social championsthis is a very good opportunity for sex workers to become socially relevant he saidsecretary of ashodaya samithi a mysurubased sex workers collective bhagyalakshmi said sex workers out of business during the lockdown period are struggling to make ends meetsome have bank passbook some dont as they live on the roads and have no houses she said appealing to the government to give them at least rs 1000rs 1500 to buy essentialssources said some sex workers are using innovative ways to offer their service like sex talk longdistance sex and mobile videos and get paid through digital payment platformsbut its a very small amount of money and small number of people is involved