National Condom Day in the United States is February 14^th. We at the MCHIP Program are celebrating the occasion by sharing eight fast facts about this simple invention that continues to save lives around the world! Answer the questions below to determine if you are a condom expert or a condom novice – and in the process, learn more about this reversible birth control method, which can be used by all couples, including breastfeeding women, without the assistance of a health care provider.

Female condom. © 2006 David Alexander, Courtesy of Photoshare

1. What role do condoms have as a family planning option?

Condoms are the only family planning item on the market that has the dual purpose of protecting against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and offering protection from pregnancy.

2. Who buys more condoms, men or women?

Women worldwide purchase 40-70% of all condoms (with men purchasing 30-60%).[i]

Perspective of a student intern in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is a land of stark differences. Deep divides between socio-economic classes and, more importantly, even deeper divides in access to quality healthcare exist between rural and urban areas. Additionally, an inequity which might be less obvious but possibly of crucial importance, is the difference in performance between Frontline Health Workers (FHWs) in rural versus peri-urban and urban areas.

Populations are less densely populated in rural areas and even the lowest level government FHWs tend to be much better compensated on average than the populations they serve. Which is why, it is not uncommon to find FHWs who live quite far from the areas they serve in the interest of better schools for their children or more amenities such as electricity to enjoy.

In an effort to find out more about the program managers, policy makers, and service providers who use K4Health's POPLINE database, I recently spoke with Tendai Gunda, a nutrition expert who works on programs in Zimbabwe. POPLINE provides access to scientific articles, reports, books, and unpublished documents, and clients like Gunda continually look to the database for the family planning and reproductive health knowledge they need. Read on for Tendai Gunda’s story or share your own story. This blog is cross-posted from the CCP website.

When a program manager identifies a global development or health need, she then faces a new challenge: how to find the knowledge that will help lead to an effective program. This is why Tendai Gunda, a nutrition expert who primarily works in Zimbabwe, continues to turn to POPLINE for the information she needs to build, implement and evaluate programs. POPLINE is also seen as a resource for sharing and synthesizing new knowledge for policymakers, health care providers, researchers and teachers.

Tendai Gunda, a nutrition expert in Zimbabwe.

POPLINE is a bibliographic database that was established nearly 40 years ago as a comprehensive collection of population, family planning and related reproductive health and development literature. In 2001, POPLINE developed its own searchable website and, in the same year, became part of the Information and Knowledge for Optimal Health (INFO) project, now the Knowledge for Health (K4Health) Project. POPLINE complements K4Health’s central mission of sharing public health knowledge at the global, regional and country levels. For POPLINE, this means building a database of journal articles along with published and unpublished scientific, technical and programmatic publications. Interventions covered in this “gray literature” tend to be more up-to-date and represent a more diverse geographic spread and languages other than English. By including these resources, POPLINE ensures researchers gain faster access to unbiased programmatic information. Gunda found herself using POPLINE’s broad catalog as both a student and program manager. “When I was in school I introduced [POPLINE] to several people,” she noted.

Six months after the London Family Planning Summit there are signs of hope that 2013 will be a positive year toward providing an estimated 120 million more women in the world’s poorest countries with access to contraceptives by 2020 so that they can plan the number of children to have or space their births.

A health worker counsels a woman on reproductive health and family planning in the Visayas region of central Philippines. Voluntary family planning programs are allowing women and couples to plan the number of children they want to have.

© 2000 Liz Gilbert, Courtesy of Photoshare

As of January 8, 2013 financial commitments by donors and the private sector at the London Summit reached a total of US$2.625 billion. My colleague Allison Bland wrote in an earlier K4Health blog: “Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) will continue to frame our discussions as governments, civil society, and technical institutions move toward the 2020 target.”

Also in January, after more than a decade of opposition, Philippines President, Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino, III, signed into law the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012. The new law guarantees universal access to contraceptive methods, sexual education, and maternal care. A guiding principle states: “The provision of ethical and medically safe, legal, accessible, affordable, non-abortifacient, effective and quality reproductive health care services and supplies is essential in the promotion of people’s right to health, especially those of women, the poor, and the marginalized, and shall be incorporated as a component of basic health care.”

Congratulations to the people of the Philippines for taking a huge move that will undoubtedly reduce the unmet need for family planning and eventually help to lower the total fertility rate for the country, which was estimated at 3.2 children per woman in 2012.