D.C. first U.S. city to give out free female condoms in AIDS battle

WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia will become the first city in the United States to distribute condoms for females for free, part of a project that will make 500,000 available in beauty salons, convenience stores and high schools in parts of the city with high HIV rates.

City officials said the distribution could begin within the next three weeks in city wards where a study showed that large numbers of African-American heterosexuals engage in risky sexual behavior that could easily lead to infection.

The move is an official acknowledgment of the futility of relying solely on the use of men's condoms, which have been distributed citywide for nearly a decade, to stem the city's epidemic of HIV and AIDS. Officials said they are turning to condoms for females to give women more power to protect themselves from HIV and sexually transmitted diseases when their partners refuse to use protection.

HIV/AIDS infection is the leading cause of death for black women 25-34 nationwide. A 2008 report showed the D.C. HIV/AIDS rate at 3 percent, or about 15,100 adults, a major epidemic.

"Anywhere male condoms are available, female condoms will be available," said Shannon Hader, director of the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration.

The project is funded through a $500,000 grant from the MAC AIDS Fund, a subsidiary of MAC Cosmetics. The grant helped the city buy the condoms at wholesale prices from Female Health Co. and provide them for distribution by social-service organizations, including Planned Parenthood, the Community Education Group and the Women's Collective.

Activists say poor women often are reluctant to protest when their husbands and boyfriends refuse to use condoms because they are dependent on the man's income.

The condom for females has been available in Europe for nearly two decades and was first approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1993. Its use in the United States was limited and ineffective. Women complained that the first version, FC1, was too expensive, about $17 for a box of five, and unsatisfactory.

Last year the FDA approved a second version, FC2, with a thinner polyurethane that conducts body heat and enhances sexual sensation for men and women, according to its designers.