Objectives: Worldwide, women face sexual and reproductive health (SRH) risks including unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV. Multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) combine protection against two or more SRH risks into one product. Male and female condoms are the only currently available MPT products, but several other forms of MPTs are in development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) represent a powerful opportunity to address the unmet sexual and reproductive health needs of women in at-risk populations around the world in an efficient and cost-effective manner. The development of MPT products for the combination prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (including HIV) is a high-risk/high-gain, expensive process. The associated challenges are compounded by limitations in available resources for the development, evaluation, and delivery of such products.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: This paper presents the public health rationale for multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) for sexual and reproductive health (SRH) based on regional trends in demographic and SRH indicators. It then distils important lessons gleaned from the introduction of contraceptive and reproductive health products over the past several decades in order to inform the development and future introduction of MPTs for SRH.
Principal Results: A comparison of current demographic and public health regional data clearly revealed that the greatest confluence of women's SRH concerns occurs in sub-Saharan Africa and South/West Asia.
Definitions of male condom failure modes are now well documented, and failure events are usually reported as the proportion of the total number of condoms used and the proportion of men/couples who experience an event. The lack of standardized definitions for female condom (FC) failure has led to variability in reporting and hence difficulties in making comparisons across studies. As a result, the World Health Organization convened a technical review committee meeting in January 2006 through which the members compiled and agreed to a standard list of terms and definitions for each of the failure modes.
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