VoteUpIndia

WASHINGTON — Charlene Cotton will talk to anyone about sex. Several days a week she stands behind a table decorated with a bowl of flavored condoms and safer sex pamphlets, calling to women passing on the street, “Come check out my table. Don’t be scared.”

She asks: “Have you heard of the female condom?” Then, to show how it works, she picks up her demonstration kit — a condom and anatomical models.

It’s a seemingly awkward conversation to have on a city street, but Cotton isn’t embarrassed. She’s part of a citywide effort to promote female condoms in the hope they can help stop the spread of HIV in Washington, which has one of the highest infection rates in the U.S.

Community groups are handing out 500,000 of the female condoms, flexible pouches that are wider than a male condom but similar in length, during instruction sessions at beauty salons, barber shops, churches and restaurants.

Pharmacy chain CVS is selling them in all its Washington, D.C. drugstores, though sales so far are slow. And city officials are starting another promotion: a website and posters on 460 buses, about a third of the city’s fleet.

The ads, which feature a cuddling couple, a female condom package and the words “Get turned on to it,” will run for three months and again in the spring. “The female condom with pleasure points for her and him — to tease, please and protect. Go on, give it a try,” the ad urges.

“Everybody is doing a full-court press,” said Mary Ann Leeper, who heads the introduction of the condom in the U.S. for Female Health Co. of Chicago, the sole manufacturer.
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This post was submitted by virendra kumar yadav.

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