Ten months after being re-launched, a new brand of female condom has proven popular among a test group of Ugandan women, according to a study.

FC2 was launched in February; the government stopped distributing the original female condom, FC1, in 2007 on the grounds that women had complained it was smelly and noisy during sex.

"The new condom has improved features and will enable women to have a procedure within their control to give them more choices for prevention (of HIV and unwanted pregnancies)," said Vashta Kibirige, the coordinator of the condom unit at the Ministry of Health.

"The women surveyed say they like this version of the condom better and they are ready to use it," said Janeva Busingye, coordinator of the Most at Risk Populations Initiative project, which carried out the study in the capital, Kampala.

The UN Population Fund and the NGO, Programme for Accessible health Communication and Education, are spearheading the re-launch of the female condom, which is still in the sensitisation stage and will become available to the public in 2010.

The women questioned said the new condom was less noisy, more comfortable and well lubricated, increasing their sexual pleasure. It also has no smell and can be inserted in the vagina at least eight hours before sex, which the women liked a lot.

The Health Ministry and its partners have so far trained women in Kampala to teach other women the benefits of the female condom. According to Kibirige, they hoped the condom would become more popular in other regions after a situation analysis in 2008 revealed that cultural barriers and lack of proper education had prevented their use in some parts of the country.

source: Reuters

photo: flickr/mrflip