POPULATION-CUBA: Contraceptive Factory a Weight off Women’s Minds

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jul 13 1998 (IPS) - Cuban women’s concerns over family planning could be considerably lightened if plans go ahead for a factory producing 500 million contraceptive pills per year.

The initiation of production at this plant – announced several times in the past and repeatedly put off due to economic crisis since 1990 – could supply women with 50 million pills in its first phase of operation in the last quarter of the year.

Cuba has around 3.5 million women of childbearing age, creating a demand for 250 million contraceptive pills per month, while supplies have been unreliable in recent years.

“I reached the point where I was chasing the pill from one chemist shop to another,” Martha Gomez, a 22 year-old university student, told IPS, “but then they disappeared forever and I had to opt for an IUD (Intra Uterine Device).”

Gomez would have preferred her partner to use condoms to avoid the complications of the IUD – painful periods, inflammation and even haemorrhages – which eventually led to her having it removed.

Like most men in Cuba, her husband claimed the condom reduced his sexual pleasure.

While she is waiting for the pills to become available again, Gomez is using the rhythm method, something she considers “highly unreliable.”

In the meantime, distribution of contraceptive pills is being limited.

“The contraceptive pills distributed in Cuba come from donations and are mainly used for high risk women, like the hypertense and diabetics,” said Alfonso Farnos, a UN Population Fund (UNFPA) official.

Since the paralisation of national production of oral contraceptives in 1991, Cuba’s female population has increasingly turned to the IUD, even in cases where this is not recommended – especially amongst younger women.

Farnos said the “chain of benefits” to be started by national production would include a change in the structure of contraceptive use, a reduction in the number of abortions and the possibility of using UNFPA aid in other areas.

This year alone UNFPA contributed 330,000 dollars to the supply of oral contraceptives out of the total 650,000 dollars supplied up until now. The rest of the funds have been used for sex education projects, AIDS prevention and statistics.

United Nations projects in Cuba have the basic aims of reducing the high rate of abortion – a procedure which is available legally, free of charge and on demand.

Chairman of the non-governmental Cuban Scientific Society for the Development of the Family, Miguel Sosa, said there were 80,097 abortions in 1997, a number far lower than the 147,530 of 1990.

Sosa attributed the drastic drop in the figure to a more rational use of abortion by women and consequently the better use of contraception.

However, authorities from other sectors claim the difference is not so much due to the greater prevention of pregnancy and family planning as to the introduction of the morning after pill, which terminates possible pregnancies but does not rank as abortion.

The National Fertility Survey, of the late eighties, showed 99.5 percent of Cuban women could name at least one form of birth control, but only 68 percent used any form of contraception.

The pill was the method preferred by most Cuban women, but even when this was freely available in the chemist shops most women had interrupted several pregnancies before having their first child.

When it comes into operation, the new plant will start producing six highly competitive formulas, meeting the specific needs of several groups of women, including the under 20s and over 35s.

Support for the project has come from several UN agencies, although the most important contribution by far was the 2.8 million dollars from the UNFPA.

The UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) co-operated throughout the process to help the factory to fulfil international demands on quality control, environmental and worker protection.

It also had contributions from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Panamerican Health Organisation (PHO).

“It is not common for UNFPA to give this sort of aid,” said UN co-ordinator resident in Cuba, Ariel Francis, during a visit to the already working plant.

UNFPA has co-operated in the installation of factories making oral contraceptives in Vietnam, India and China. But in Cuba the challenge was to “respond to a crucial problem in a lasting manner,” said Francis.

The international official added “Cuba is a nation where abortion became used as one more method of contraception, with enormous health risks for the woman, making this plant top priority amongst the population projects.”