She has your eyes!

Another condom advertisement, this time the product is from Holland I think, but the advertising agency is in Belgium.

It is apparently so effective that in the first week, traffic to the site increased by 77% and nearly 3000 online orders were placed.

See for yourself.

The World Bank

According to its website, the International Development Association (IDA) is the part of the World Bank that helps the world’s poorest countries. Established in 1960, IDA aims to reduce poverty by providing interest-free loans and grants for programs that boost economic growth, reduce inequalities and improve people’s living conditions.

It states that they are one of the world’s largest external funders in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Of the eight focus areas for Africa, one is health and another is women’s empowerment.

For a few days now there have been reports that references to family planning have been removed from their health strategy and from the Madagascar country assistance strategy. Without contraception, how are they going to achieve those aims?

Apparently Juan José Daboub, the Managing Director, has close ties with the Catholic church.

There are fuller reports in the Financial Times, the Guardian, and Guardian comment.

Abortion crisis in the UK

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists today issued a statement to say that the number of doctors prepared to carry out abortions is gradually falling and will lead to a crisis in the service. They recognise any doctor's right to refuse to carry out abortions but equally are aware that it is an essential service. They go on to say that family planning and gynaecological services should have adequate funding to ensure that abortions are kept to a minimum.

There is an extensive and what seems to be a well-balanced report in the Independent. By the time the BBC reported the story, the situation was threatening the National Health Service.

The report I find interesting though, is also in the Independent, "Issue that goes to the heart of our differences with America". I've said in the past on other blogs that there just doesn't seem to be nearly as much emotion on this side of the Atlantic, but faced with the discussions that seem to abound, sometimes I have wondered if I was missing something here. A case of selective awareness perhaps, and only noticing opinions that would reinforce my own point of view. Well if that is the case, the Independent article is another reinforcement. I particularly like the final sentence.

"Too many women are dying giving life" in Malawi

I lived for a time in Malawi so the news caught my eye.

Malawi has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world: 6,000 women a year die during pregnancy or childbirth. Approximately 30% of 15 to 19 year olds already have a child and many have unsafe abortions. The plan is to instigate a system of care, to be know as a Road Map, right through from contraception to pregnancy, childbirth and post-delivery. This initiative is backed by the UN and has been runas a pilot scheme in some areas.

Incidentally, from AllAfrica.com, one of the papers presented at a a workshop says that 80% of women needing treatment for unsafe abortions in Nigeria are adolescents.

Condom testers wanted

Condom manufacturers, Durex, are looking for 5,000 "on the job" condom testers in the UK, the only reward being a chance to win £500 . It is almost impossible to get to the site this evening.

When they advertised in France, they had 14,000 applicants in one day. It must be that advertisement again!

India and HIV/Aids

It seems to me there is quite a lot of press and other coverage about the HIV/Aids situation in sub-Saharan Africa but not a very great deal about the situation in India.

An article in the BMJ by a second year medical student tells of his dismay when he heard, during a discussion about HIV/Aids, a professor say that there was no problem of homosexual transmission in India because there was no such thing as homosexuality. The responses to the article are also worth reading.

The writer also highlights the fact that sexuality in general is a taboo subject and that is the focus of a more recent article in the New Statesman, “Can a condom bar raise awareness about HIV in India?” by Preeti Jha.

When trying to find out more she attempted to speak to the organiser of the condom bar but he refused to discuss such a subject with a woman. She found similar attitudes everywhere so no surprise then that 30% of students in Chandigarh practise unsafe sex.

Apparently India now has the dubious honour of being the country with the highest number (5.7 million) of people living with HIV, according to a report from the UN, having recently overtaken South Africa. Without a focus on education, and from an early age, with media cover to reinforce the messages, it is hard to see how there will be any improvement.

Are you ready for so much pleasure? French condom advertisement.

The Lancet has been running a series called Sexual and Reproductive Health over several months. In the issue 2 December there was an article “Promoting protection and pleasure: amplifying the effectiveness of barriers against sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy”, unfortunately subscription only.

It’s generally accepted that the increased use of condoms is a essential as HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections spread. Rather than stressing the negative aspects of lack of use, health campaigners are changing tack and promoting pleasure in using of male and female condoms - alongside safer sex messages – hoping that this will lead to an increase in use. The perception of a decrease in sexual pleasure was found, in a 14 country study, to be the main barrier against use.

The authors say

Since pursuit of pleasure is one of the main reasons that people have sex, this factor must be addressed when motivating people to use condoms and participate in safer sexual behaviour. Although enjoyment - and even sex itself - has been noticeably absent from much of the dialogue surroundingSTI and the spread of HIV, increasing evidence shows the importance ofcondom promotion that includes a combination of pleasure-based and safer sex messages.

There was a press release from the Pleasure Project to publicise the report. It seems that the efforts are largely aimed at the developing world but not exclusively. More about the Pleasure Project here .

In France there has been a television ad to promote exactly this subject. I can’t imagine it being shown in the UK: even in France it was considered unsuitable to be shown before, I think, 10:30 pm. Not for the faint-hearted and definitely NSFW, but I thought it was very, very good. For the most part you don't need to understand French.

Update: the Manix site no longer shows the ad, but it is on YouTube - Pub Manix. The part where the couple are going down the escalator still makes me collapse with laughter.

Contraceptive Awareness Week

It's contraceptive awareness week in the UK. How many people know that? I happened upon it by following up an article in the Guardian somewhat by accident. You’d think they’d try a bit harder at the awareness.

Two surveys have been published to coincide with this event.

Schering Health Care surveyed 1020 women. Some of the figures are fairly staggering - 12% of women aged 26-34 have had an abortion; 20% of these had not been using contraception and 27% had forgotten to take their contraceptive pill. 30% have gone through with an unplanned pregnancy whilst in a long term relationship; 41% of these were not using any form of contraception at the time, and a further 29% had forgotten to take their pill. Well all right, in a long term relationship they possibly weren’t as concerned as they would have been otherwise, but it’s still bad.

Although nowhere like as bad as the Glasgow study which found that approximately 50% of women were using no contraception, the conclusion was similar: that there is a need for better contraceptive education. Schering, who produce long-acting reversible contraceptives, of course are not unbiased.

At the same time, the FPA published a survey to highlight other sex education issues. They surveryed 495 people over 18. Did this include 70 year olds? And what was the weighting “applied to the data to bring it into line with national profiles”?

I have to say I took the quiz and found a couple of the questions tricky so I’m not surprised that some of the results were poor. Again though, the results do highlight the need for better education. That 29% could think that jumping up and down, douching or urinating could prevent pregnancy is unbelievable (with the proviso that I don’t think the question was well phrased).

Teenage pregnancy

I spent what felt like years, but was probably only two plus several bits, studying part-time for a further degree in health psychology. It was very relevant to the job I was doing at the time and it's a subject that fascinates me.

One particular aspect which interests me is reproductive health so when I spotted two blogs, first The Well-Timed Period: Who Doesn't Use Birth Control and then figleaf (note: adult content with some very thought provoking posts), had picked up on a BBC report “Teenage pregnancy myth dismissed” - I delved a bit further. So far in fact that I ended up emailing the authors and they very kindly sent me a copy of the original paper.

The main finding is that “older women” are as irresponsible as teenagers about contraception, with around 50% not having used contraceptives at all. I’m not disputing their findings an any way – far from it. It’s just that I would have liked more information. I think there probably is quite a lot more to be tweaked out of the data.

I have difficulty in understanding why the researchers made a division of the population into teenagers and not-teenagers. What happens when they are 20? Are they expected to change their attitudes suddenly? I don’t know why they did that, and especially when you see that the mean age of the so-called older women was 28. There must have been a much greater number in their twenties than in their thirties or forties (the range was 20 – 46). It would have been interesting to see those age groups separately, if not the raw data. It might show more in the way of trends.

Given that teenagers were expected to be more irresponsible, and that there have been a number of government initiatives since 1999 trying to combat teenage pregnancies, it could be the sex education has worked to some extent. Teenagers are now no worse than other age groups.

The results are dire however. I have to say in the case of this research and where it was carried out, social problems will have had a very large influence. It is an area of high unemployment, overcrowded housing, and so on.