By Frankie Edozien First Published: 4/9/2007

NEW YORK — When it was reported over a year ago, that New York City health officials were working on a plan to brand their own condom, Big Apple residents snickered. Jokes could be heard from one end of the city to the other.

The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, who had pushed through a smoking ban in public restaurants before it became di-riguer around the world, just soldiered on. His boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood by him and the deal was made.

Even as the secret was out, health officials revealed no details on their plan until almost two months ago when the official ‘NYC Condom’ was unveiled on Valentine’s Day.

It was no joke.

City officials, celebrities — including designer and amfAR president Kenneth Cole — and AIDS service workers showed off the product, with workers giving them away at subways, street corners, bars and just about everywhere that day.

Cole hosted the news conference announcing the condoms at his Rockefeller Center store.

Each standard-size condom, made by LifeStyles, is packaged in a wrapper stamped with the letters “NYC CONDOM” in the same font and bright colors used on city subway maps and signs. Some began calling them the subway rubbers. There were the first of its kind for any municipality.

The distinct packaging helps officials keep track of the product’s effectiveness as well as encourages its use. However, grumbling came from the city’s catholic leaders as the packets were handed out all over town.

Edward Cardinal Egan, head of the Archdiocese of New York, and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, released a joint statement lashing out at City Hall leaders and denouncing the program as “tragic and misguided.”

Egan and DiMarzio, who together serve more than 4 million Catholics, added that the only way to protect against sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS is through abstinence before marriage and fidelity among married couples.

“Our political leaders fail to protect the moral tone of our community when they encourage inappropriate sexual activity by blanketing our neighborhoods with condoms,” they said.

But Bloomberg shrugged off their criticism and defended the initiative, saying it was not an issue of faith but a “real world” solution to a health crisis.

More than 100,000 of New York’s 8.2 million residents have HIV or AIDS, and officials estimate some 20,000 don’t know their status. The Big Apple remains the epicenter of the pandemic with blacks and women increasingly bearing the brunt of new infections.

The city began giving away condoms in limited quantities back in 1971. But the recent ramped up efforts have seen the numbers go from 4 million in 2003 to 18 million in 2006. That record could be surpassed by years end.

In the first month of NYC Condom’s distribution, 5 million were given away to residents and visitors.

The total cost is still unclear but officials say it’s a drop in the bucket for a city with a $57 billion budget. Few cities could match New York’s public health budgets and so far none has tried to brand their own condoms. Frieden

“The NYC Condom is a sensation,” a thrilled Frieden said. “Hundreds of community organizations are signing up to give out free condoms, many for the first time. I commend them for doing their part to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies,” the commissioner said.

Indeed it seems as if everywhere one goes in the Big Apple, the prophylactics are available.

Officials saw a torrent of hits to the www.nyccondom.org website, they set up for distribution (15,000 hits the first week and 35,000 by the end of the month) and sent new condoms to a myriad of establishments.

From AIDS advocacy groups to hair salons, clothing stores, nightclubs, coffeehouses and more. Anyone who wants can simply order them.

But officials have been proactive too, asking some establishments like Monster Sushi, a popular eatery with multiple branches, to pick them up. Managers said they constantly refill the baskets at the door. Close to a million condoms were distributed that way.

A sentiment echoed at other hitherto non-tradition condom distributors.

“Our customers keep asking for more,” said Peace St. Clair, a barber at the Levels Hair Salon of Harlem.

At the Pieces Bar, a gay watering hole in Greenwich Village, manager Brandon Griewank said the product’s vivid packaging sells itself. “They’re going by the handful. They capture the style and wit of New York.”

By Frankie Edozien

TORONTO — As delegates to the XVI International AIDS Conference, walked the halls and talked of HIV prevention strategies, conversations invariably led to the recent study in Orange Farm, South Africa that found that circumcision had an astounding 61 percent chance of preventing female-to-male HIV infection.

One of the biggest donors to HIV/AIDS research, Melinda Gates, even touted circumcision during the opening ceremonies fueling the ongoing debate on its efficacy

That adult male circumcision could be a preventative procedure, permeated so many conversations that it was surprising to some that there was only one panel discussion on the issue among the myriads presented during the conference, held Aug. 13-18. Delegates reported that in Botswana, many men were lining up to get circumcised if it meant protection from HIV.

Kawango Agot, a researcher from Kenya, presented findings that concluded circumcision has “shown some protective effects for women and if it’s not helpful for women, it’s not helpful at all.”

She conducted two studies of men who used government facilities and were not in a controlled trial. “Forty-seven percent chose circumcision because of protection against sexually transmitted infections.” Her colleagues on the podium seemed to agree that the power of circumcision as a prevention tool is a forgone conclusion.

While international organizations are waiting for the results of two more studies before officially beginning to praise its benefits, Agot said there are 13 more studies going on in nine African nations. A study by Dr. Robert Bailey of the University of Illinois, Chicago is expected to be completed by 2007. His study in Kisumu, Kenya, began with nearly 5,000 people, but now has 2,784 subjects.

Dr. Douglas Schaffer of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research said his study of residents in rural Kenya, where 77 percent never used condoms, showed that the procedure “offers a degree of prevention for men in the Rift Valley.”

Kyeen Mesesan, graduate student at the Yale School of Medicine, presented findings from a study in Soweto, South Africa, and concluded that if the male circumcision program was continued, 32,000 new infections could be prevented in 20 years.

“Circumcision is already having a tangible effect on the epidemic there,” she said but warned that “if risk behavior continued [among the newly circumcised] the benefit of the program could be diminished.”

Dr. James Kahn, professor, Division of Clinical Epidemiology, Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, worked on the much-talked about South African random control trial that concluded that 61-percent preventive efficacy in adult male circumcision represents a cost-effective tool in prevention methods.

At a cost of $55 per adult male, the cost-saving in HIV treatment could be $8,000 or more. Four of the five experts who spoke to delegates at the conference were white researchers from the United States. A point not lost on the multicultural delegates. I’m happy to see your face up on the panel,” Nesha Haniff, a Jamaican researcher, said to Agot.

“How can you roll out a plan that tells us to say to black men what to do with their penises from research that’s from a predominately white and western sector. It’s impossible,” she said.

Haniff said later: “It is my great frustration that the lead scientists on almost all these projects are western, white and almost always predominately male. Our culture and perceptions and realities are constantly being left out and structured like a purely logical scientific problem.

Many questions were left unanswered. Details on the science itself on why circumcision is preventive were sketchy. “I want to be able to explain why it works. They haven’t told us that. Just that it works,” Haniff said.

Some social scientists lamented the fact the studies failed to consider the cultural implications of asking black African men to consider circumcision. Others said scientists were confusing the issue by suggesting condom use instead of the surgical procedure.

“We are saying that if the studies conclude that it is beneficial, it has to be incorporated into the whole spectrum of prevention strategies, including condom use, abstinence, faithfulness, other risk reductions, needle exchange and everything else,” Agot said.

Being Queer in the African/Black Diaspora

By Frankie Edozien

For more on this topic, visit African & Caribbean Council on HIV/AIDS in Ontario.

TORONTO — In virtually all African and Caribbean communities today, homophobia is so rampant that it remains a challenge — 25 years into the HIV pandemic — to do outreach to gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

But with the ever-rising HIV infection rates, this vast population is slowly coming out of the shadows and is beginning to stand up and demand effective treatment and prevention strategies, activist say.

Activist came together during the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, to demand strategies and urge their compatriots to become public with their gender identification. They participated in a session titled “Being Queer in the African/Black Diaspora.”

They demanded also that heterosexuals join in the fight for equality for their queer brothers.

“You can be met with fines, imprisonment and death. The police can legitimately cut you off on the side of the road, do harm against your body and your spirit and it would be OK,” said Llana James.

James is a Canadian resident who hails from Trinidad and Tobago.

“You cannot fight for rights for one side of you and then leave the other out because we are your children. We made you, we pay for you to show love, pick up our sisters in the middle of the night and we expect the same. When we look at HIV prevention, it is about love. It is about remembering that all black people count,” James said.

Tokes Osubu, who lives in New York City and runs the Gay Men of African Descent, (GMAD) agreed.

“We’re dealing with a human-rights issue. At the end of the day, if we don’t do it we certainly will go to our graves very depressed,” said Osubu, who is 46 and has lived with HIV for 22 years.

“We’re not at home in Canada. We’re not at home in the U.K. We cannot even be at home when we go home,” he said.

During the six-day conference, Osubu made an effort to seek out African delegates and introduce. He also committed to traveling to Africa so he could help in the fight on the ground.

Oludare Odumuye, the head of Alliance Rights Nigeria, the only rights group for sexual minorities in Nigeria, said outreach in Africa’s most populous country for gays is an up-mountain battle.

“We’re not within the national response. There is no funding. There is no recognition of the fact that we do exist. There is criminalization. There is a lot of societal and religious discrimination,” Odumuye said.

We’re here to increase our visibility,” Odumuye added, saying that gays and lesbians abound in Africa. “We want our voices to be heard. AIDS is killing all of us in Africa and we want our voices to be heard.”

Robert Carr, co-founder of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition from Kingston, Jamaica, said it is extremely difficult to do outreach on that island nation, known worldwide for its homophobia.

“It drives people underground at this point. There are very few people willing to embrace a gay identity or a lesbian identity at this point. Its difficult to live openly. Most people end up living in the shadows,” said Carr, who organized and moderated the session. “The more the issue is discussed, the more there is international support for people’s rights.”