'Increase funding for female condoms'

Saturday, July 24, 2010 (Daily Graphic Pg 11)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah, Vienna, Austria,
WOMEN'S health advocates at the International AIDS Conference (2010) underway in Vienna the capital city of Austria, have criticised the lack of funding and policy support from international donors and governments for female condoms, which they consider a critical woman-initiated tool for fighting the HIV epidemic.
At media a briefing held as part of the six day international event, the National Co-ordinator of the Community Initiative for TB, HIV and AIDS and Malaria (CITAM+) in Zambia, Ms Carol Nawina Nyrienda said,.“If you have access to a female condom, you can protect your partner, and if you are HIV positive you can protect yourself from reinfection and unwanted pregnancy”. 
Ms Nyrienda, who contracted HIV from her husband, underscored the need for a woman-initiated protection option, adding that women could not depend on thier partners to save their own lives.
It was evident at the conference that women's health advocates all over the world had expressed a demand for the female condom but donors and governments were yet to provide corresponding funding and programme support.
The United States Government is said to have have increased its investment in female condoms, yet women’s health advocates noted that more significant resources were needed to achieve a woman-focused approach to HIV and AIDS.
  “The true travesty is in Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Lucie van Mens, Co-ordinator of the Universal Access to Female Condoms Joint Programme, which has Oxfam as a partner.
She noted that women made up an estimated 60 per cent of adults living with the virus, yet female condoms were only available at a rate of one for every 300 women per year.
"We have to approach the HIV and AIDS epidemic with women in mind, and female condoms are a critical component to that”, she stressed.
  The Head of the Oxfam delegation at the conference, Jim Clarken, reiterated that female condoms were vitally important in the fight against HIV and AIDS, particularly as it empowered women to take the initiative in their own sexual health.
In the same vein, women’s health advocates at the press conference said further research and development was needed in order to diversify the range of products on the market and to reduce costs.
 That was because there were complaints associated with the use of the female condoms currently available on the market. Although, there are new types, they said, they were not easy to come by.