Uganda: The case of Kasensero fish landing site
Channel: IOM - UN Migration
Date: 13/03/2014

In fishing communities, the majority of populations are migrants. The fishing villages are economic hotspots attracting mobile populations from neighboring countries as well as Ugandans from distant districts, in search for economic breakthroughs.

These populations spend many nights away from their homes which creates varying degrees of loneliness, in communities where sex work and disposable incomes are common, thereby creating environments conducive to high risk sex.

Mobility limits access to quality HIV services and information, since work and travel practically allow no time to visit the clinic, take drugs on time or even get resupplies of medicine.

Fisher folk communities are often hard-to-reach; therefore they normally have weak health systems, exemplified by medicine or condom stock outs, long queues at health facilities and unsupervised health.

The Behaviour change communication does not cause any impact change since the communities are highly mobile. HIV programmes for fisher communities should be tailor-made to match their unique context.

To address the fisher folk, IOM is offering migrant-friendly care, and is using sex workers as peer educators for community health promotion. These approaches are impacting these key populations in a positive way and we would like to scale-up.