Why Condoms?

Some 14 thousand people a day become infected with HIV and the vast majority of these infections are sexual.

Yet sexual transmission of HIV can be avoided through the practice of safer sex. Despite this fact, HIV continues to spread mainly because not enough people are practicing safer sex. Abstaining from sex, mutual monogamy between uninfected sexual partners, and the correct and consistent use of male and female condoms are the only existing options for avoiding sexual infection.

The condom is the only technology available for protection from sexually transmitted HIV. It is scientifically undisputed that the transmission of HIV during sexual intercourse can be prevented when condoms are used correctly and consistently. Nonetheless, condom use is still much too low. Insufficient use is due to many factors, such as low levels of awareness, poor availability and accessibility, especially for young people, misinformation, and the stigma attached to condoms.

Condom use is especially important for individuals at higher risk of infection, including men who have sex with men, sex workers and their clients, injecting drug users, migrant workers and others who are obliged to spend long periods away from their regular sexual partners. However, there are people everywhere who cannot adopt an alternative method to condom use for protecting themselves or others, such as those whose sexual partners are infected by HIV and the women and men forced by their circumstances into sex work.

In those places where HIV prevention efforts have been successful in reducing prevalence and infection rates, condoms have played a key role, such as in Thailand among sex workers and their clients, and among young men in Brazil and India.

Condoms are a simple and affordable yet life-saving technology. They can be easy to use, do not require medical supervision, and can be distributed through schools, places of employment, bars, and other public venues, as well as health care facilities.

Prevention efforts that include condoms are highly cost-effective. It is obviously better to prevent HIV infection now than to bear the human, societal and financial costs of illness and its treatment and care later. According to a study by the University of California at Berkeley, interventions to control STIs among urban sex workers that include health education and condom distribution are the most cost-effective interventions and cost just US$3.50 per life saved per year.

Whatever its initial entry point into a population, HIV eventually spreads through sexual transmission. Although in its initial stages the epidemic may spread mainly through unsafe blood and injecting drug users, HIV inevitably spreads within the general population as a sexually transmitted infection.

Where curable sexually transmitted infections exist, so does HIV. Worldwide, over 300 million new cases of curable sexually transmitted infections occur annually, with a regional distribution similar to that of HIV. Infection with an STI increases a person’s risk of acquiring HIV, especially for a woman. Correct and consistent condom use, and other behaviors to limit exposure to infection, can prevent sexually transmitted infections, especially HIV.

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