Sexuality and reproductive rights
Failing women, withholding protection 15 lost years in making the female condom accessible
Why is access to female condoms failing?
Authors:
Publisher:
Oxfam, 2008
Since the beginning of the HIV pandemic, many girls and women have struggled to protect themselves from infection, even when fully aware of the facts of HIV transmission. This report highlights how despite the absence of any other female-initiated form of protection, and unprecedented rises in funding for the response to HIV, female condoms remain inaccessible, and their contribution remains untapped. The document describes how women who use female condoms report an increased sense of power for negotiation of safer sex, and a greater sense of control and safety during sex. Providing both female and male condoms leads to more instances of protected sex and reductions in the incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
This report considers what is behind the failure to act comprehensively to create access to female condoms. Overarching errors of a lack of leadership, a huge funding bias against existing forms of primary HIV prevention, failure to scale up programming, and failure to invest in strategies to lower the cost of female condoms are described. Reccomendations include:
- UNAIDS and UNFPA, along with donor and development organisations, must provide visible global leadership to tap the potential of the female condom as a contraceptive and a prevention method against STIs including HIV
- governments, donors, and private investors must support female-condom research and development (R & D) to create choice and lower prices
- national governments, civil-society organisations, and the private sector should collaborate on comprehensive long-term integrated female-condom programming, making female condoms available to all women and men, given their universal relevance as a contraceptive and STI-prevention method
- civil society organisations should demand that governments and international agencies include female condoms in their family-planning and reproductive disease (including HIV) prevention programmes
