I love this phrase: "customers avoided the cheapest brands (of condoms) because the rubber was hot. Do you think he meant hot like spicy or hot like heat?

No man I know would like to put on a hot condom. Good thing the title of the article ensures us that someone is making them cool.

Jamie

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Family planning providers make condoms cool
Shwe Yee Saw Myint
Myanmar Times
Friday, 18 September 2015

Ko Sai, 26, has never used a condom, and wouldn’t know how to if he tried. Like most people in Myanmar, he received no formal sexual education at school. What he does know – from advertising and his friends – is that condoms are useful for preventing infection with HIV, and other sexually transmitted diseases.

But one thing the tour guide – who lives with his parents in North Dagon – is sure of is that they have no place in a stable relationship.

“I would never use a condom to have sex with my wife or my girlfriend. If I sleep with my girlfriend before we marry, I’ll tell her to take the emergency birth-control pill to prevent pregnancy. That’s what most of my friends do,” he said.

“I don’t want to carry a condom with me all the time. I’m afraid people might think I’m looking for a sex worker. People who really love each other shouldn’t use them.”

Ko Sai is not alone. Many Myanmar men are reluctant to use condoms due to a range of factors, including traditional beliefs about monogamy and a lack of sex education.

Girls are even less likely to have access to information about sex. Mothers rarely dispense knowledge to their daughters and, unlike boys, girls are reluctant to broach the topic with friends.

But market factors are also at play. An analysis of the condom market by nonprofit organisation Population Services International (PSI) earlier this year found a need for close coordination between government and the private sector to further reduce HIV and to expand and sustain the market for male condoms.

They discovered that young Myanmar men were not buying condoms because, for the few who were interested in using them, it was easier and cheaper to get them for free.

Hyam Bolande, country director for DKT, one of the largest private providers of family planning and reproductive health products and services in the developing world, said condoms were unpopular because they were associated with wrongdoing, such as extramarital affairs and hiring sex workers.

“If people are in a stable relationship, they feel there is no need to use a condom,” he said. But he added that attitudes towards sex were changing, possibly leading to a rise in unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

“Condoms are seen as a shameful product, probably because of their association with sex workers,” he said. “When we first carried out market research in Myanmar, we found that most people’s first exposure to condoms was through some kind of NGO program connected with HIV/AIDs. But, because HIV/AIDs is also associated with shameful topics like the sex industry, this also contributed to the idea here that condoms are not for respectable people.”

DKT, whose products include the Kiss and Kiss Mojo condom brands, has been selling condoms in Myanmar for more than a year, and has ambitious plans for growth.

Bolande said part of their strategy was to normalise conversations about contraception.

“We want to promote the idea that condoms are fun and cool, as well as being a part of normal life. So, like they are in many other countries, they can be used by normal people who are dating or beginning a new relationship ... not only for high-risk situations,” he said.

Bolande said he had seen many rival condom companies come and go as demand had not increased since 2009. Among the challenges he faces are attitudes among the police, who have been known to arrest women found in possession of condoms on suspicion of being sex workers, as well as the availability of products smuggled from China or India without testing or registration, and of unreliable quality. Some are fake versions of the real thing.

“People think all condoms are equally good, but that is not so,” he said, though he added that the availability of poor-quality products should not be taken as evidence that condoms as a whole are unsafe.

“This is wrong. Most condoms are very safe. You just have to make sure you buy the right ones,” he said.

Used correctly, condoms can prevent pregnancy and reduce the transmission of STDs by up to 95 percent. In Myanmar, they are often sold in pharmacies, betel nut shops and some supermarkets for prices ranging from K300 to K1500 for a box of three.

A shopkeeper on Pansodan Street said he sold six brands, some of them provided by NGOs.

Brands provided by NGOs tended to be cheaper, but the shopkeeper said customers avoided the cheapest brands because the rubber was hot.

Married men and poorer people used the cheap products, and middle-class and educated people preferred to pay more, he said.

“I sell 20 boxes a day, mostly to regular customers. But sometimes the police tell me to stop selling them,” he said. Last Thingyan, police mounted operations in Yangon and Mandalay aimed at removing sex-related products from the shelves, prompting objections that such action could help the spread of pregnancy and disease.

http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/lifestyle/16534-family-planning-providers-make-condoms-cool.html