As a key part of its vigorous campaign against the spread of HIV/AIDS, the Brazilian government is planning to distribute over one billion condoms free of charge this year.
– The government campaign in Brazil is straightforward, like nowhere else in Latin America, said Frederico Meyer, a minister at the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the United Nations Friday.
He told IPS that the countrys health ministry consistently supports educational campaigns stressing the importance of condom use by everyone, including women and youth.
By contrast, in Argentina, condom advertisements were forbidden a few years ago. But even in an open culture such as in Brazil, stigmas persist. Earlier this month, a condom advertising campaign that portrayed two men kissing each other was removed from the streets by a Brazilian non-governmental organisation calling itself the Self-Regulation Advertising Council.
According to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), condoms “are the only effective means of protecting sexually active people from HIV infection”. And Brazils AIDS programme, which includes the distribution of condoms and affordable anti-retroviral drugs, is being described as the most successful in the developing world.
Other countries do have similar programmes. In China, whose population is 1,3 billion, the national family planning system offers 1,2 billion condoms per year, according to the Permanent Mission of China to UN.
But in many African nations, the number of condoms distributed is erratic. In Nigeria, 14 million condoms were distributed in 1992, and the number rapidly increased to 227 million, but after that it declined to 68 million in 1998.
In India, only a quarter of the 1,5 billion condoms manufactured each year are appropriately utilised, according to an investigation by an Indian newspaper, The Telegraph.
It said that 200.000 condoms are used for purposes other than fighting AIDS and preventing conception – for example, by weavers to lubricate looms and polish gold and silver thread used to embroider the saris they produce.
Brazil has been handing out free condoms for over a decade. In 2003, it distributed 259 million condoms, many imported from China and India at a cost of two cents each – a price that, according to Pedro Chequer, director of the Brazilian STD/AIDS National Programme, “is impossible to achieve inside the country”.
The government has also steadfastly adhered to a policy of engaging with so-called “high risk” groups, refusing 40 million dollars in US grants last year because of a new requirement that HIV/AIDS groups seeking funding to provide services in other countries must pledge to oppose commercial sex work.
HIV prevalence among adults in Brazil, whose population is about 187 million, is 0,7 percent, according to the UN. However, as UNAIDS and the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported last year, Brazils achievements remain unique in Latin America.
Kilde: The Push Journal
