Social determinants of health PDF

SOCIAL DETERMINANTS
OF
HEALTH

1
Contents
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................1
Sex workers in Australia and Thailand..................................................................................................1
Living Environment of the sex workers in Australia.............................................................................2
Health care systems...............................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES......................................................................................................................................5

2
INTRODUCTION
HIV/AIDS is a spectrum of situations that has occurred due to infection caused by human
immunodeficiency virus. HIV AIDS is one of those diseases that have become a challenge
for the human population. Since HIV virus destroys the immune system of the human being
hence it makes people vulnerable to other types of diseases. Since this disease is spread by
both social and physical interactions hence social determinants of health plays a very crucial
role in its treatment. On the other hand it is a long lasting disease hence it has effect on the
economic condition of both individual and family (Martin, 2012). There are various
vulnerable groups in the world who are in high threats of getting these diseases. This report
examines about the vulnerable group i.e. sex workers of Thailand and Australia. The
comparison and contrasting is done on the basis of two social determinants of health i.e.
living environment and health care systems.
Sex workers in Australia and Thailand
AIDS Council of New sales suggest that there are around 20,000 people working as a sex
worker in Australia. Massage parlours and brothels are the major areas of these sex workers.
Although they work on both off-site premises and on-site premises but still the public spaces
remains the major area of their business (Australian Government, 2017). Some of these
places are legal and some are illegal. It is estimated that in the years to come such spaces will
be going to increase. Private workers and brothel based workers are generally more
dependent on the condom use rather than drug use. There is very low rate of sexually
transmitted infection. HIV rate has been very much low in the Sydney sex workers.
On the other hand Thailand has been one of the sex capitals in the country. On an estimate
this industry is worth US$6.4 billion a year in terms of revenue. This is a significant amount
of the GDP. In fact Thailand is famous for its sex tourism. In this country very high numbers
of sex workers are having HIV/AIDS. Governments have launched many campaigns to
promote safe sex. In all these campaigns condom has been highly promoted. The impact of it
can be seen by the fact that there are restaurants opened in country that serves free condoms
to their consumers. The condition of HIV/AIDS in the nation is so bad that government has
launched five year plan that includes Mechai’s “100 condom programmes” (Poteat, et. al.
2015). This instructed the workers not to do intercourse without taking help of condoms.