KENYA IS facing a major shortage of condoms as demand outstrips supply, according to health authorities.
Responding to a documentary on Citizen TV, which showed Kenyans near the town of Isiolo washing condoms in handbasins in order to use them again, public health director Shahnaaz Sharif told reporters that high demand and supply problems meant that a January consignment of 19 million condoms lasted for around six weeks.
“The demand was eight million per month, then it went to 12 million and currently stands at around 20 million. That gives you the number of encounters people would have,” he said.
Condoms were still available in the private sector, he said. But with 75 per cent of condoms used in Kenya distributed by the government, close to 8 million people would not have access over the coming weeks.
Kenya has a population of 40 million people.
An emergency order of 45 million condoms has since been made to the US president’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief.
However they will not be available for another three weeks.
Demand for condoms has risen 100 per cent according to the authorities, due in part to recent campaigns promoting condom use.
Billboards and radio advertisements regularly point to the importance of condom use, with warnings such as “Your secret lover probably has a secret lover.”
The campaigns started after confidence in condom use declined two years ago, following a news report that showed locally stocked brands to be defective.
KTN, a local TV station, filmed the Kenya Bureau of Standards filling condoms with water and found that many of them suffered leaks.
Poor distribution at the lowest levels of the healthcare system had caused the current shortage, explained the National Aids Control Programme deputy director Peter Cherutich, announcing that a long-term agreement had been signed with the United Nations Population Fund to supply 180 million condoms.
He added that the Kenyan government was also expecting an additional consignment of condoms in May, which was expected to last until August.
“The delivery bought 19 million condoms in January, which were distributed. But we are expecting others that will come in consistently beginning in May, for 30 million condoms each month, until August,” he said.
“We have procured vehicles that will transport these condoms to the interior but we must also appreciate that their delivery requires proper road networks and that is one of the challenges that we face,” he said.
Kenya has a 6.3 per cent HIV prevalence rate among adults according to Unicef, down from an estimated 12.8 per cent in 2000, when the government kickstarted a major preventive drive and began promoting condom use.
This followed a break in silence by the country’s leaders over the issue, with then president Daniel Arap Moi declaring the Aids epidemic a national disaster in 1999 and stating that “ in today’s world, condoms are a must”.