via The Body, by Jon O’Brien During his 2009 trip to Cameroon, a country with an HIV prevalence rate of over 5%, Pope Benedict XVI made a shocking assertion on condom use to prevent HIV. He told reporters, “You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem.” Read the rest.

via The Daily Beast, by Joyce C. Tang The first version of the female condom made a weird noise, fell out, and was expensive, too. Now public health experts are pushing a new and improved version in American cities. Can it overcome stigma? Made from polyurethane, which is less pliable than latex, the female condom could be Read More >>

[IRMA wonders what the implications are for some potentially contraceptive microbicides, which would be non-hormonal.] Stringer, Elizabeth M; Levy, Jens; Sinkala, Moses; Chi, Benjamin H; Matongo, Inutu; Chintu, Namwinga; Stringer, Jeffrey SA AIDS: 17 July 2009 – Volume 23 – Issue 11 – p 1377-1382Background: HIV-infected women need access to safe contraception. We hypothesized that women using Read More >>