Female condoms in Africa? (2)
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Source: Gender-aids <gender-aids@bizet.inet.co.th>
[...] If the female condom is acceptable to even 1% of women isn't it
worth adding another option to the array of safe prevention methods?
The experience of family planning programs has been that contraceptive
prevalence increases as the array of contraception options increases. I
think the same would be true with the female condom and HIV prevention
programs. Making it available would increase the percentage of (poten-
tially) unsafe sex acts protected.
I was involved with the earliest research of acceptability of this de-
vice in Asia in the late 1980's, and the data led us to believe that
the female condom would be most acceptable in the low-fee brothel envi-
ronment, less so in the higher fee CS environment and least among women
in the general population. Based on a three-province study in Thailand,
we estimated that the female condom would be used in 10% of brothel sex
episodes if it were made available free of charge to brothel workers.
That additional option for Thailand's most vulnerable persons would
probably have made the difference for hundreds of young women around
the country, thousands of men and thousands of wives -- had the device
been introduced in the early 90's when we already knew it was safe and
acceptable to some groups of women.
It is a tragedy that we in the donor and prevention community could not
have made this device available to more women sooner in the history of
the HIV epidemic. Let's make it available and let the women choose
themselves.
Seasons Greetings,
Tony Bennett
Bangkok
tbennett@mail.fhibkk.org
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