Free condom scheme launched
A Shanghai office building on a busy street has become the first in the city to start distributing free condoms as part of the government's push to prevent the spread of HIV.
Since last week, office workers in the state-owned Guolu Building have been helping themselves to condoms, birth-control pills and family planning literature crammed into a plastic box outside the building's small medical clinic in a secluded hallway, organisers said yesterday.
Other cities and provinces are joining the effort. On Sunday, Beijing, Jiangsu province and Haikou , capital of the island province of Hainan , started to distribute condoms more widely at universities, bars, entertainment spots and areas with large migrant-worker populations, state media reported.
Shanghai aims to expand the experiment to four more buildings in central Jingan district, and eventually to nearly 50 buildings.
One of the sponsors defended the project against claims that it would promote promiscuity, saying the scheme was designed to educate young, unmarried office workers.
'Our aim is not to encourage everyone to have pre-marital sex,' said Gu Xiwen , deputy secretary of the Communist Youth League of Jinjiang International Holdings, one of the building's tenants.
Clinic officials have also been passing out four to five boxes of Health Happy condoms a day since launching the scheme. Previously, office workers could ask the clinic for birth-control products but few did so, out of embarrassment, a doctor said.
The World Health Organisation yesterday praised the central government's efforts to slow the spread of Aids, but added the mainland was one of four countries of 'special concern' in the region.
It had about 840,000 HIV/Aids cases, the organisation said.
