Today, September 16th, marks the second annual Global Female Condom Day – a day of education and advocacy dedicated to female condoms. Last year, thousands of individuals and nearly 200 organizations from 26 countries participated, and today HIV/AIDS and reproductive health organizations, advocates, and individuals from around the world from are again taking action to raise awareness and demonstrate the need for female condoms, promote their use, and call for greater access.
Female condoms are powerful safe-sex options for women, men, and youth. Around the world they play a vital role in improving reproductive health—they are the only method available today designed to offer woman-initiated, dual protection from pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. But they are not well known, available, nor accessible in many places for potential users and providers alike. Currently, 99% of all condoms distributed worldwide are male condoms and only 1% are female condoms. Global Female Condom Day aims to increase the number of women and men around the world who know about, use, and advocate for female condoms.
This topic is important for us here at Women with a Vision, as we work to educate our communities about HIV and STI prevention, and female condoms are a part of our outreach and HIV-prevention work around the city. Advocacy to increase access to better preventative tools like female condoms are also an integral part of our broader work, particularly given the high rates of HIV infection in the South. The number of Louisiana HIV/AIDS cases reported among African Americans was greater than any other racial/ethnic group in 2011, and African Americans represent 80% of those newly infected with HIV. Women of color, particularly Black women, have been especially hard hit and represent the majority of women living with the disease and women newly infected. Yet, awareness and availability of female condoms remain incredibly low in areas with highest rates of HIV infection.
WWAV works to reach these hardest-hit communities. WWAV was founded more than twenty years ago specifically to do this: to address the spread of HIV/AIDS in communities of color, providing HIV/AIDS education, while also advocating for the need to increase prevention efforts and expand resources for sex education programs. The continued lack of readily available female condoms in our communities and the continued lack of a comprehensive sex education programs in our communities are why awareness days like today are important.
Today WWAV joins organizations across the world in calling on increased promotion and education, wider distribution, and better access to female condoms through comprehensive reproductive health education and STI/HIV prevention programs at the national, state, and local levels.