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Poverty Forces Women to Reuse Female Condoms
Women and AIDS Support Network (WASN)
Vol 12 WASN News 2002
July 01, 2002

By Matilda Moyo

Women, particularly commercial sex workers, are reusing the female condom, thereby exposing themselves to further risks as they attempt to make maximum use of the scarce device.

This came to WASN’s attention recently during the course of the organisation’s work, when some commercial sex workers confessed that they reused the device after cleaning it with various substances such as beer, urine, water and detergents.

According to Mary Sandasi, WASN deputy director, most women were forced to reuse the female condom, also known as the care contraceptive sheath or femidom, because it was expensive and inaccessible, unlike the male condom.

Most commercial sex workers, she said, reused the sheath when they had several clients and the practice was very prevalent.

Women, having acquired knowledge on HIV/AIDS, were keen to protect themselves from infection, but could not afford to buy the device regularly, hence they were forced to reuse it and in the process compromised their health. In some cases, even if women had the money, the condom was not readily available on the market in certain areas.

On average, the femidom costs $55 for a pack of two, while the male condom costs $10.00. Effectively, the cost of a single femidom is $27.50, which is almost treble the cost of the male condom. In addition, the male condom is available free of charge in almost every place conceivable such as bars, hotels, libraries, clinics and hospitals, to name a few.

This, Sandasi said, was cause for concern and there was need for speedy intervention to protect the women by making the device both affordable and available.

"While it has come out that some women, especially commercial sex workers, are reusing the female condom, for us as a women’s organisation, it is a sign of desperation. We strongly feel that HIV/AIDS prevention should be taken as a population issue so that all genders are looked at equally in terms of prevention," she said.

"Engendering the HIV/AIDS pandemic and solutions will bring a holistic approach in eradicating the problem," she added.

Sandasi said it was surprising that although AIDS had been around for almost 20 years now, only the male condom was easily accessible and available.

The debate of reusing the female condom was now a gender issue which brought out double standards on the part of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the global organisation that is supposed to look at the implications of reusing the condom and the infections that such a practice is likely to cause.

WHO, she said, needs to urgently address the need to avail female controlled devices by subsidising them.

The introduction of the female condom to Zimbabwe in 1997 following heavy lobbying by women’s organisations, spearheaded by WASN, was hailed as a victory that would empower women and drastically reduce the spread of AIDS.

At that time, the device was heavily subsidised and sold for $3.00, although the real market price was $32.00.

However, this victory was short lived as there seems to be some laxity now with the product no longer being subsidised and not being readily available on the market, a retrogressive step that threatens to disempower women once again.

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