Maria looks and sounds like a typical 17-year-old. She's interested in clothes and make-up. She complains about school – she's doing well in science and humanities, but German is her weak spot. She has a boyfriend she adores. She comes to "Our Clinic" in Tomsk for her monthly HIV test, because her health is important to her. After the courses she's taking at night to finish her high school education, Maria has a job as a commercial sex worker.

"I have to keep myself healthy because of my boyfriend," Maria says. Her boyfriend doesn't know that she is a sex worker, but she thinks he suspects something. There are five other girls who work in the brothel with her, but she spends a fair bit of time on the street trying to get business.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, outreach workers from "Our Clinic" drive through the city in the clinic's van, distributing small plastic bags filled with HIV prevention brochures and condoms to sex workers. The messages seem to be getting through. Maria says condoms are always used and other sex workers echo her experience. "We usually explain the rules – that we don't work without condoms," says Alena, 23, who is receiving counseling in the van.

Every three months outreach workers also collect blood from sex workers for HIV testing. They receive the results at the Tomsk AIDS Center which provides another opportunity for giving information and counseling.