 Combination HIV prevention demonstrates significant promise in reducing burden of disease. To maximize its effectiveness combination prevention must be tailored to a given context and population. From the beginning of the global HIV epidemic, female sex workers FSWs have been found to be at heightened risk for infection. More recently the role that sex work plays in ongoing HIV transmission dynamics has been more clearly established in generalized epidemics, where previously limited attention was paid to the role of key populations. The greater vulnerability of FSWs is now widely understood to be associated with social and structural factors including the intense stigma, discrimination and violence they often face and the unsafe environments in which they live and work. These factors are known to limit both protective sexual behaviors and engagement in HIV testing, care and treatment services. Comprehensive, community-based HIV prevention approaches addressing the aforementioned social and structural vulnerabilities to HIV infection among FSWs have been shown to be effective in South Asia and in Latin America. However, in sub-Saharan Africa where the impact of HIV is the greatest, no systematic efforts to develop and evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of community-based combination HIV prevention among FSWs has occurred. 