Background Facts on Condom Supplies

• In sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS is the number-one killer. Yet the condom supply there equals less than five condoms per year for every man between 15 and 59.

• HIV/AIDS is expected to consume half of Kenya’s 2005 health budget and 61 percent of the health budget of Zimbabwe.1

• Over 40 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and 14,000 more infections occur each day, most through heterosexual relations.2

• Male and female condoms are the only known way to prevent sexually contracted HIV infections.

• Donor countries supplied only 25 percent of the 2002 global need for contraceptives, including condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.3

• An estimated 9.9 billion condoms were needed in 2002 to significantly reduce the spread of HIV, but donors provided only 2.5 billion condoms that year. Still, the count was up from 950 million in 2000, primarily because of a $90 million grant to UNFPA from the Dutch, British and Canadian governments.4

• Those governments and other European governments have provided $75 million in extra-budgetary funding to UNFPA for commodities in 2005.

• To buy 9.9 billion condoms would cost about $297 million. Another $1.5 billion would be needed for distribution, storage, related services and HIV/AIDS education in order to slow the pandemic. 5

• Brazil , China and India are self-sufficient in contraceptives, but other developing countries must import them, paying with scarce foreign exchange that is also needed for food, medicine and other necessities. 6

• Contraceptive prevalence in developing countries has increased from around 10 percent since the 1960s to almost 60 percent today—525 million people—with 9 out of 10 users relying on modern methods. But an estimated 350 million couples do not have access to those modern methods.7

• The number of condom users in developing countries is expected to increase more than 40 percent by 2015, to at least 742 million people, chiefly from population growth: history’s largest generation of young people 15-24 – more than one billion strong -- is now entering its reproductive years.

• Since 1999, more than 19 million female condoms have been supplied to several countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America through joint efforts of UNFPA, UNAIDS, WHO, The Female Health Company and national partners. 8

1 PATH, July 2003, Outlook/Volume 20, Number 3

2 PAI, January 2005, Fact Sheet: Who Condoms Count in the Era of HIV/AIDS

3 UNFPA, 2004, Database on Donor Support for Contraceptives and Logistics Management.

4 UNFPA, 2004, Database on Donor Support for Contraceptives and Logistics management.

5 January 2005, Fact Sheet: Who Condoms Count in the Era of HIV/AIDS

6 Except where indicated, figures are from UN Population Fund, Reproductive Health Commodity Security: Partnerships for Change, A Global Call to Action, UNFPA, New York, 2001

7 UN Population Fund, “Lives Together, Worlds Apart,” State of World Populat5ion 2000 Report, New York, 2000

8www.UNFPA.org/about/report/2002/4chapter.htm accessed 2/8/05

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