By MARTIN TONNY
WHO should wear a condom? The husband or the wife? The boy or the girl? An educated single woman says she will not wear a condom because she is not a ‘rubbish dump’. Another educated man says he sees no reason why he should use a condom when having sex with his wife because to use a condom with her is treating her like a ‘prostitute’.
Another woman who asked the husband if they could use a condom for fear of getting pregnant because they had an eight month old baby was abused by the husband - the husband thought she was having sexual relations with another man and did not want to spread sexually transmitted infections.
The condom was initially introduced for family planning, but today it has lost its essence. Because the condom is promoted at all levels of society as a means to safe sex it is now seen as a tool for promiscuity rather than that of family planning.
Papua New Guineans have also invented other uses for the humble condom - there are testimonies of condoms being used as fishing lures, shoe polish and the lubricant as ‘medicine’ for white spot. How did we end up with such misconceptions about the condom?
Marie Stopes Papua New Guinea is a non - government organisation specialising in family planning and sexual reproductive health in PNG.
Since its inception in 2006, the organization has worked closely with church groups, community based organisations, youths and adolescents of reproductive age to deliver consistent, accurate and culturally appropriate information on family planning and sexual reproductive health.
As part of its campaign to provide healthy choices in family planning and sexual reproductive health, MSPNG conducts community consultations, focus group discussions and one-on-one interviews to determine its path for safe, quality, accessible and affordable service and information in family planning and sexual reproductive health and the issue of condom is unavoidable.
MSPNG now sees this anomaly as an issue of marketing. The product, condom, is not well positioned for its intended use(s) and therefore, is not strategically delivering its purpose.
Condom information in general is harshly pushed into the hands of Papua New Guineans and it’s educational and awareness drives are foreign in orientation.
When Papua New Guinea realised that HIV/AIDS was at her door step, the safe sex concept was quickly promoted without paying attention to as to how Papua New Guineans view sex and sex education.
There was the perception that in order to drive the message home, there is a need to be blunt. But this was done with little or no consideration for Papua New Guinea’s cultural diversity. Different cultural groups have different ways of being blunt about an issue, and so what one group considers as the norm may not be appropriate, or it may even be offensive to another.
So far there are claims that instead of giving accurate and culturally appropriate information on the condom and its use in the face of HIV/AIDS, most of the educational campaigns promote promiscuity. A very critical elderly woman says that the current ABC campaign is telling the public to abstain just to make the churches happy, be faithful so that it will make a couple happy and use condoms so as to create room for prostitution. She sarcastically said when D is to be added it should say DIE to avoid all the confusion that is created by ABC and that is her view of being blunt.
The campaign so far is good with recent statistics showing that \HIV/AIDS is declining in the urban areas. However, it is now moving into the rural areas and that is the worst nightmare Papua New Guineans will have. The hypothesis per se is that it took millions of kina to campaign against HIV/AIDS, and many years after the first reported HIV/AIDS case to make the urban centres realise that HIV/AIDS is here to stay. Frighteningly so, the rural people do not have good access to the mass media and the high illiteracy rate make them most vulnerable.
Thus far, the misconception about condom is not making the job any easier for MSPNG to promote condom as a family planning contraceptive method. MSPNG’s goal is to contribute towards achieving the National Health Plan 2001 - 2010 by providing healthy choices in family planning and sexual reproductive health. With these condom stories and high population projection for the next ten years, will Papua New Guineans be willing to use other family planning contraceptives?
MSPNG with its experience in forty different countries believes strongly that by working with the Government of Papua New Guinea, NGOs and other stakeholders they can pool resources to assist and support each other to meet the unmet demands in family planning and sexual reproductive health.
 

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