Web Sex Log

Women in a Nepal mountain village have been mailing condoms to their husbands working overseas to protect them from sexually transmitted diseases, a news report said Tuesday.

The women of Pang village have been writing their husbands letters urging them not to have sex with others — but they have been enclosing condoms just in case, the Kantipur newspaper reported.

Social workers have been counseling the women about sexually transmitted diseases.

“As I learned that unsafe relations make a person vulnerable to HIV, I sent a condom along with the letters to my husband,” one of the village wives, Laxmi Sunar, told the newspaper.

An estimated 3 million people from impoverished Nepal work overseas, most as manual laborers, and send money home to support their families.

Indonesia to launch first-ever national condom campaign

Indonesia is to launch its first-ever national campaign to promote condom use to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, officials said Tuesday.

National Condom Week will coincide with World AIDS Day on December 1, said Sugiri Syarief, head of the National Family Planning Board who is overseeing the event.

The groundbreaking campaign will involve condom distribution, education on the benefits of using condoms as well as following safe sex practices, and other events aimed at helping lift the stigma attached to using condoms here.

The event “is aimed at popularising condoms as a tool to prevent unwanted pregnancy and a way to prevent sexually-transmitted diseases, especially HIV” in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Syarief said.

Government efforts to promote condom use have so far focused on family planning and not generated much enthusiasm, he said, noting that condoms account for less than one percent of all contraception used in Indonesia.

An unsupportive social environment, ignorance as well as a low awareness of the importance of safe sex have conspired against condom use in the world’s fourth most populous nation, he added.

The head of the Indonesian Council of Mosques, Tarmidzi Taher, said the campaign was partly aimed not at getting Muslim leaders to endorse the use of condoms but to allow them to “understand the medical arguments for them.”

Nafsiah Mboi, secretary of the National AIDS Mitigation Commission, said that safe sex education would also help efforts to curb the spread of HIV.

The World Health Organisation warned in February that Indonesia had one of the fastest-growing HIV populations in Asia.

Latest official figures showed that more than 16,200 Indonesians have been infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS since 1987, Mboi said.

“But unregistered infection cases are much more numerous, with estimates that in 2006 some 176,000 to 247,000 people have been infected by HIV” since it became prevalent, she said.

Basic information about condoms

A condom is a device, usually made of latex, or more recently polyurethane, that is used during sexual intercourse. It is put on a man’s erect penis and physically blocks ejaculated semen from entering the body of a sexual partner. Condoms are used to prevent pregnancy and transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs—such as gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV).

Male condoms are usually packaged inside a foil wrapper, in a rolled-up form, and are designed to be applied to the tip of the penis and then rolled over the erect penis. They are most commonly made from latex, but are also available in other materials. As a method of contraception, condoms have the advantage of being easy to use, inexpensive, having few side-effects, and of offering protection against sexually transmitted diseases. With proper knowledge and application technique—and use at every act of intercourse—condom users experience a 2% per-year pregnancy rate. Condoms may be combined with other forms of contraception (such as spermicide) for greater protection.

Some couples find that putting on a male condom interrupts sex, although others incorporate condom application as part of their foreplay. Some men and women find the physical barrier of a condom dulls sensation. Advantages of dulled sensation can include prolonged erection and delayed ejaculation; disadvantages might include a loss of the erection, or a loss of the pleasure of sexual actions.

Most condoms have a reservoir tip, making it easier to leave space for the man’s ejaculate. Condoms also come in different sizes, from oversized to snug. Most condoms are made of latex, but polyurethane and lambskin condoms are also widely available.

Latex condoms

Lubricants

Latex condoms used with oil-based lubricants (e.g. vaseline) are likely to slip off due to loss of elasticity caused by the oils.

Some latex condoms are lubricated at the manufacturer with a small amount of a nonoxynol-9, a spermicidal chemical. According to Consumer Reports, spermicidally lubricated condoms have no additional benefit in preventing pregnancy, have a shorter shelf life, and may cause urinary-tract infections in women. In contrast, application of separately packaged spermicide is believed to increase the contraceptive efficacy of condoms.

Nonoxynol-9 was once believed to offer additional protection against STDs (including HIV) but recent studies have shown that, with frequent use, nonoxynol-9 may increase the risk of HIV transmission. The World Health Organization says that spermicidally lubricated condoms should no longer be promoted. However, they recommend using a nonoxynol-9 lubricated condom over no condom at all. As of 2005, nine condom manufacturers have stopped manufacturing condoms with nonoxynol-9, Planned Parenthood has discontinued the distribution of condoms so lubricated, and the Food and Drug Administration has proposed a warning regarding this issue.

Testing

Latex has outstanding elastic properties. Tensile strength exceeds 30 MPa. Condoms may be stretched in excess of 800% before breaking.

In 1990 the ISO set standards for production (ISO 4074, Natural latex rubber condoms) and the EU followed suit with its CEN standard (Directive 93/42/EEC concerning medical devices). Latex condoms are tested for holes with an electrical current. If the condom passes, it is rolled and packaged. Batches of condoms are tested for breakage with air inflation tests.

Health issues

Dry dusting powders are applied to latex condoms before packaging to prevent the condom from sticking to itself when rolled up. Previously, talc was used by most manufacturers, however cornstarch is currently the most popular dusting powder. Talc is known to be toxic if it enters the abdominal cavity (i.e. via the vagina). Cornstarch is generally believed to be safe, however some researchers have raised concerns over its use.

Nitrosamines, which are potentially carcinogenic in humans, are believed to be present in a substance used to improve elasticity in latex condoms. A 2001 review stated that humans regularly receive 1,000 to 10,000 times greater nitrosamine exposure from food and tobacco than from condom use and concluded that the risk of cancer from condom use is very low. However, a 2004 study in Germany detected nitrosamines in 29 out of 32 condom brands tested, and concluded that exposure from condoms might exceed the exposure from food by 1.5- to 3-fold.

Polyurethane condoms

Polyurethane condoms can be thinner than latex condoms, with some polyurethane condoms only 0.02 mm thick. Polyurethane is also the material of many female condoms.

Polyurethane can be considered better than latex in several ways: it conducts heat better than latex, is not as sensitive to temperature and ultraviolet light (and so has less rigid storage requirements and a longer shelf life), can be used with oil-based lubricants, is less allergenic than latex, and does not have an odor. Polyurethane condoms have gained FDA approval for sale in the United States as an effective method of contraception and HIV prevention, and under laboratory conditions have been shown to be just as effective as latex for these purposes.

However, polyurethane condoms may be more likely to slip or break than latex, and are more expensive.

Lambskin

Condoms made from one of the oldest condom materials, labeled “lambskin” (made from lamb intestines) are still available. They have a greater ability to transmit body warmth and tactile sensation, when compared to synthetic condoms, and are less allergenic than latex. However, conventional wisdom holds that there is an increased risk of transmitting STDs compared to latex because of pores in the material, which are thought to be large enough to allow infectious agents to pass through, albeit blocking the passage of sperm. Lambskin condoms are frequently called ineffective with regards to preventing sexually transmitted diseases. Nonetheless, hard data regarding the alleged lack of efficacy are lacking. Although a search of the PubMed database of medical literature does not demonstrate any clinical trials demonstrating that lambskin condoms have decreased efficacy, at least one study does suggest that use of non-latex condoms is associated with higher rates of breakage and slippage.

While it may make sense to portray lambskin condoms as simply “ineffective” for the sake of simplicity in educational settings, it is more accurate to state that there are solid scientific reasons to expect lambskin condoms will be less effective in preventing STDs than latex and poluyrethane, though the degree of such presumed decreased efficacy is not known. It is unlikely that lambskin condoms would be “ineffective” in preventing STDs; for example, the risk of transmitting a disease through depositing 1.5 to 5 mLs of ejaculate directly into a partner’s body cavity without the use of any barrier protection would be anticipated to be greater than the risk involved in depositing such ejaculate into a lambskin barrier within a body cavity, with the barrier subsequently removed from the body cavity along with all or virtually all of the ejaculate.

Because the degree of efficacy of lambskin condoms has not been rigorously investigated and because there exists a solid rationale to expect them to have decreased efficacy, it is prudent to treat them as not effective. If one has concerns about the possibility of STD transmission, it is prudent to use latex or polyurethane condoms, rather than lambskin condoms.

Experimental

The Invisible Condom, developed at Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada, is a gel that hardens upon increased temperature after insertion into the vagina or rectum. In the lab, it has been shown to effectively block HIV and herpes simplex virus. The barrier breaks down and liquefies after several hours. The invisible condom is in the clinical trial phase, and has not yet been approved for use.

As reported on Swiss television news Schweizer Fernsehen on November 29, 2006, the German scientist Jan Vinzenz Krause of the Institut fur Kondom-Beratung (”Institute for Condom Consultation”) in Germany recently developed a spray-on condom and is test-marketing it. Krause says that one of the advantages to his spray-on condom, which is reported to dry in about 5 seconds, is that it is perfectly formed to each penis.

Effectiveness in preventing pregnancy

The effectiveness of condoms, as of most forms of contraception, can be assessed two ways. Perfect use or method effectiveness rates only include people who use condoms properly and consistently. Actual use, or typical use effectiveness rates are of all condom users, including those who use condoms improperly, inconsistently, or both. Rates are generally presented for the first year of use. Most commonly the Pearl Index is used to calculate effectiveness rates, but some studies use decrement tables.

The typical use pregnancy rate among condom users varies depending on the population being studied, ranging from 10–18% per year. The perfect use pregnancy rate of condoms is 2% per year.

Several factors account for typical use effectiveness being lower than perfect use effectiveness:

• mistakes on the part of those providing instructions on how to use the method
• mistakes on the part of the user
• conscious user non-compliance with instructions.

For instance, someone using condoms might be given incorrect information on what lubricants are safe to use with condoms, or by mistake put the condom on improperly, or simply not bother to use a condom.

Effectiveness in preventing STDs

Condoms are widely recommended for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). They have been shown to be effective in reducing infection rates in both men and women. While not perfect, the condom is effective at reducing the transmission of HIV, genital herpes, genital warts, syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and other diseases.

According to a 2000 report by the National Institutes of Health, correct and consistent use of latex condoms reduces the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission by approximately 85% relative to risk when unprotected. The same review also found condom use significantly reduces the risk of gonorrhea for men.

A 2006 study reports that proper condom use decreases the risk of transmission for human papilloma virus by approximately 70%. Another study in the same year found consistent condom use was effective at reducing transmission of herpes simplex virus-2 also known as genital herpes, in both men and women.

Although a condom is effective in limiting exposure, some disease transmission may occur even with a condom. Infectious areas of the genitals, especially when symptoms are present, may not be covered by a condom, and as a result, some diseases can be transmitted by direct contact. The primary effectiveness issue with using condoms to prevent STDs, however, is inconsistent use.