Still can't afford that coat you've had your eye on? You've probably considered the usual options: stretching your plastic that little bit further, hinting you'd like it as a present, or waiting for the sales. But if you're an Iranian sex worker, you could be thinking of something more extreme. You might even offer to sleep with the shop assistant in return for a discount, according to Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Health education workers interviewed for the article warn that swapping sex for free or cheap clothes - "an increasingly common arrangement in Tehran's fashion shops" - is undermining efforts to fight rising HIV infections in the Muslim country.

The Iranian government has been praised by the United Nations for its programme to prevent the spread of HIV among injecting drug users (Have a look at AlertNet's crisis briefing on AIDS in the Middle East). There's been less focus on sexual transmission. Officially it accounts for less than 10 percent of reported cases but is thought to be increasing.

Staff at Iran Positive Life, a volunteer group that gets some of its funding from the U.N. children's fund UNICEF, told the Guardian it's hard for them to reach out to sex workers, who are often poorly informed about the risks of HIV/AIDS. "If they are infected and have sex with three or four shopkeepers a day, you can imagine the danger," team leader Fattahi said.

Alarmingly, one shop worker in a mall in a wealthy part of Tehran estimated that half of his colleagues had accepted offers of sex for clothes. Another said he'd been propositioned 40 to 50 times. The authorities have reportedly tried to stop the practice by posting more police and security guards in malls. But that doesn't seem to be having much effect.

Iran Positive Life believes the best way to tackle this phenomenon is to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS among buyers of sex - in this case shopkeepers - in the hope they'll alter their behaviour, as well as educating young people who are seen as less likely to respect the country's strict sexual conventions.

Better knowledge about sexual transmission in Iran could also help limit the spread of the virus among sex workers, who number 300,000, according to the Guardian. Many are girls who have run away from home, with an average age of just 20, the paper says.

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