Latin American and U.S. Latina Women Unite to Demand Access to the Female Condom
Posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
In a strategy to combat AIDS and HIV, Latina and American women, have demanded a greater access to female condoms.
Prevention Now!, a coalition that has 37 registered members, which is compromised of 28 organizations (from 11 nations of Latin America and 9 Latina advocacy and service organizations based in US). The coalition released a statement demanding that international donors, as well as the governments, increase their investments for higher distribution of female condoms. In the statement, they also emphasized the need to educate men and women about its use.
“The female condom is a critical tool that holds many important advantages for women and their partners. But global distribution of the female condom remains astonishingly low 15 years after it was introduced,” said Dr. Carmen Valenzuela-Dall, a Guatemalan physician and a senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE).
Dr. Valenzuela feels that female condoms have a very important role in strengthening the strategy for combating the growing menace of HIV/Aids in woman. The magnitude of the problem can be judged from the figures that one-third of total AIDS’ victims in Latin America are woman and 16 percent of all new AIDS’ victims are U.S. Latina women.
The international community has applauded the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and Brazilian government for stepping up their investments in purchasing and distributing female condoms in HIV-plagued communities. Dr. Valenzuela opines that the programs for HIV prevention are way short in educating women about the use of female condoms. In comparison to the distribution of male condoms around the world, female condoms need to go a long distance to reach anywhere near it.
In 2007, 27 million female condoms were purchased by HIV-prevention programs worldwide, the equivalent of just one female condom per year for every 62 women aged 15 to 49. By comparison, between six and nine billion male condoms were purchased.
The international coalition has appealed to international donors as well as the national governments for increasing their investments manifolds in order to boost the purchase and distribution of female condoms around the world.
Prevention Now!, the Center for Health and Gender Equity’s worldwide initiative, is led by advocates who are striving to prevent the spread of HIV, unintended pregnancy and advancing the sexual, as well as the reproductive health, of people around the world. Prevention Now! has the support of 200 organizations in 45 countries around the world. To learn more, please visit www.preventionnow.net.
