‘Knowledge gap affects female condom use’
Health experts say there is need for collective, aggressive and sustained awareness campaign on the use of female condoms to help mitigate challenges facing the country’s reproductive and sexual health sector.
Among others, the promotion of female condom use in the country is said to help scale down the spread of the HIV and Aids pandemic as it will provides dual protection among all sexually active persons.
The recommendations was made on Monday in Lilongwe at a National Symposium on Female Condoms in Lilongwe which brought together various health technocrats, donors, service providers and consumers, among others.
The meeting also agreed on the need to have a robust monitoring and evaluation system with proper documentation at all levels to adequately track consumption levels.
This comes after several studies revealed that myths and misconceptions continue to deter demand, acceptability and proper use of the commodity.
For instance, experts say most women fail to access the condoms freely for fear of being labelled as sex workers by the public.
Principal reproductive health officer in the Ministry of Health Mary Malumbe-Phiri said: “Having such a robust sensitisation campaign, which also has to have a component of training for the users and community mobilisation, can surely help dispel prevailing myths, and decisions.”
She also called for increased male involvement in female condom programming, arguing men hold the key as they control the use of condoms during sex in society.
Hunger Project Malawi and the Centre for Health and Gender Equity (Change) organised the event to commemorate the Global Female Condom Day that fall on September 16 each year.
