The year-old Thai woman, who is in Taiwan on a visitor's visa, was picked up at a hotel by police after one of her clients got into a fight with a man posing as police officer and trying to extort money from clients, according to Tainan police.
She has visited Taiwan five times since October last year, working at hotels and obtaining seven to eight clients a day, according to the police. During her stay in Tainan, the woman may have served about customers, the police said.
After she was picked up by Tainan police, she was tested and found to be HIV positive, police said, adding they asked her to provide them with a list of her clients. The Tainan health bureau, meanwhile has advised that anyone in the city who had procured sex services since last October should get tested for HIV within three months of contact and repeat the test again three months later.
Free, anonymous HIV and syphilis tests are available at public health centers and clinics around Taiwan, the bureau said. A year-old woman from Thailand who entered Taiwan on March 11 on a visitor's visa and was arrested in Taitung County on April 2 for engaging in sex work and was recently confirmed to be infected with HIV.
The most recent known case of HIV among Taiwanese sex workers was in July , when a year-old woman in Taipei's Wanhua District was confirmed with the disease, according to the Kunming branch of Taipei City Hospital. It was the first such case in three years, the hospital said.
