India to supply cheap female condoms priced Rs 3.50 nationwide

India is planning to expand supply of cheaper female condom across the country as a measure to control the spread of HIV among women.

Female condoms are gaining wider acceptance in India. Related: Female condoms in India get more popular

A year-long pre-programme acceptability and feasibility study since November 2006, involving 60,000 women across 13 sites — 11 involving high-risk groups like sex workers and two family planning programmes — in eight states had found that 60% women were re-purchasing condoms and over 98% of the users enjoyed the comfort level.

“The pilot project was highly successful, showing consistent use of female condoms. We, therefore, propose to further scale-up the programme in two or three districts in each of the nine states. At present, India has 2.4 million HIV patients, of which nearly 40% are women. The condom will not be commercially available very soon,” stated Gaurav Jain, who is in-charge of condom promotion at National Aids Control Organisation (NACO).

Currently, cheaper female condoms are made available to female sex workers in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Rajasthan.

India wants to spread out the cheaper female condom distribution to another nine states soon through NACO. The new states which will be given female condoms are Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Haryana, Punjab, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

India wants to make the reach of cheaper female condoms nationwide as soon as the data from these 17 states are available.  NACO has already supplied 1.5 million female condoms since 2008 when it started the programme.

NACO buys female condoms over Rs 20 a piece from Hindustan Latex Limited (HLL), but provides them to female sex workers (FSW) for only Rs 3.50 each.

Nearly 50% of the 1.7 lakh fresh cases of HIV reported annually in India are women, reports said.

A year-long pre-programme acceptability and feasibility study since November 2006, involving 60,000 women across 13 sites — 11 involving high-risk groups like sex workers and two family planning programmes — in eight states had found that 60% women were re-purchasing condoms and over 98% of the users enjoyed the comfort level.

The objective to promote female condoms is to empower FSWs to convince their clients or regular partners to use condoms, and address concern regarding unwillingness of male partner to use condom, according to NACO director-general K Chandramouli.

The female condom programme was implemented through select NGOs in six states. The results from the pre-programme assessment indicated high levels of acceptance of female condoms among sex workers and around 5% reduction in unprotected intercourse.

Experts say when male partner refuses to use a condom, women need such self-initiated methods to protect themselves against unplanned pregnancies and HIV/AIDS.

India has been importing female condoms till recently. The imported female comdoms are very costly.

NACO has announced a major expansion of its Condom Social Marketing Programme (CSMP) to run under the aegis of the National AIDS Control Programme III (NACP-III) and cover nearly 80 per cent of the national population.

Through CSMP-III, NACO will increase the coverage area to 370 districts spread across 26 States & union territories f
rom 294 districts last year.

The total condom volume target set by NACP III is more than 480 million condoms through 8 lakh outlets compared to 320 million condom volume targets through 5 lakh outlets of CSMP-II.

CSMP-III also targets 93 per cent of the 1300 Targeted Interventions of NACO – which represents the most concentrated areas of highest-risk groups, according to a release.