Background The HIV prevalence in Bangladesh remains low (< 1%) among FSWs. Since June 2008, with the funding supports from the Global Fund, Save the Children gradually scaled up essential services for approximately 28,600 FSWs in 51 districts through 100 Drop in Centers and 10 outreach offices. DICs provide FSWs with behavioural change education, free condoms, STI & general health service and effective referral services including voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) and maternal & child health (MCH) services. Through the programme, a total of 28,712,708 condoms were distributed among FSWs for free and 37,318,497 condoms were purchased by FSWs through social marketing.

Methods The Midterm Survey, 2012, a cross sectional study was conducted using robust multifarious analytical tools (both advanced quantitative and qualitative techniques) to assess the progress made by the Rolling Continuation Channel (RCC), Phase-I (Dec’09-Nov’12) implemented by Save the Children. A total of 1,729 FSWs (street, hotel and residence based) were interviewed for the survey.

Results Overall, 85% FSWs had regular clients during the most recent week. Among them, 93% reported condom use during the last sex act with the client. on the other hand 77% of had new clients in last week among them, 93% reported use of condom during the last sex act with their new client. Combining all together, condom use rate has increased from 66.7% (Source: UNGASS Country Progress Report, 2008) to 95.5% in the Midterm Survey, 2012.

Conclusion Condom use is vital to prevent HIV among FSWs. Although condom use rate is high among the FSWs, strong motivational activities including peer education should be continued for the FSWs to keep the current condom use rate.