Can I, er, borrow your Department of Health? Washington, D.C. has an HIV infection rate of at least 3%, and I’ve no idea where one would obtain free condoms here. (And given our poverty levels, they’d probably do some real good.)
We’ve kind of got a glut of abstinence-only education here. It isn’t helping.
I read somewhere that one part of the condom resistance, at least in some areas, comes from the fact that the first white outsiders to spread the word about AIDS were the same people who were handing out condoms, and somehow this created the erroneous connection that condoms were the source of AIDS.
What you have is a glut of condoms.
A Time article worth reading:
“What he likes best is dry sex. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, to please men, women sit in basins of bleach or saltwater or stuff astringent herbs, tobacco or fertilizer inside their vagina. The tissue of the lining swells up and natural lubricants dry out. The resulting dry sex is painful and dangerous for women. The drying agents suppress natural bacteria, and friction easily lacerates the tender walls of the vagina. Dry sex increases the risk of HIV infection for women, already two times as likely as men to contract the virus from a single encounter. The women, adds Chikoka, can charge more for dry sex, 50 or 60 rands ($6.46 to $7.75), enough to pay a child’s school fees or to eat for a week.”