Bangladeshi sex workers take steroids to 'plump-up' for clients

The prostitutes in Bangladeshi brothels are often underage and unpaid – and now, many of them are hooked on steroids that are damaging to their health.

No one is quite sure how long Oradexon has been a feature of life in the brothels, but it has been a while; long enough for the sardarni, or brothel caretakers, to have found out that there can be long-term health implications, and to have chosen to ignore them.

According to the charity ActionAid, which has just published a report into the use of Oradexon among Bangladeshi sex workers, the drug is most commonly taken by girls and women aged between 15 and 35. "It's cheap and it's easily available," says Luftun Nahar, who works in the organisation's Dhaka office, and helped compile the report.



Nahar was one of the first people to realise that the drug was being widely used. "I remember thinking, there are all these bulky girls here – how did they get like that?" she says. "And then I asked around and someone told me they were all taking a drug called Oradexon, which is the same preparation used for cows on farms, to make them fatter."

The drug, says Nahar, is a godsend to the madams and brothel-owners. It means the pimps are able to get girls who are as young as 12 or 13 – many of them have been trafficked, and have nowhere else to go – and make them look much older.

"The pimps supply the drug, which is very cheaply available. And then they are even more powerful in the girls' lives, because the girls are hostages – they need to go on taking the drug, because if they come off it they get all these side-effects: bad headaches, stomach pains, no appetite, skin rashes. With those effects, of course, they can't work – and they can't stop working or they'll have no food, and nowhere to live."

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