China is certainly making its mark as a global leader when it comes to making condoms. In 2013, Guangzhou Daming United Rubber Products was recognized by the Guinness World Record for making the world’s thinnest male condom which measures 0.036 millimeter thin, beating Japanese competitor Okamoto by a mere 0.002 millimeter.
Recently, a female condom made in China was approved by the World Health Organization and United Nations Population Fund which would allow global distribution of the brand O'lavie, reported China Daily.
The contraceptive device is the result of a collaboration among the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and Chinese research partners. The researchers tested the made-in-China female condoms in four countries.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands funded the cross-sector collaboration. In turn, PATH created the Protection Options for Women Product Development Partnership, tasked with coming up with a supply-and-demand model for the female condom. The Dahua Medical Apparatus Corp., based in Shanghai, got the production contract in 2008.
Dahua Medical Apparatur Vice President Chen Hongxuan disclosed that Africa accounted for a large share of overall sales volume of the female condom.
Mags Bersinka, research director at Maternal, Adolescent and Child Health, a government-supported group in South Africa, said that O’lavie has a great potential to address the unmet needs and improve reproductive health not only of women, but also men and young people.
However, the female condom is relatively new compared to the male condom. According to Reproductive Health Exchange, a procurement and information service managed by the U.N. Population Fund, female condoms make up only about 0.2 percent of condom sales worldwide.
MTV reported that the female condom is disliked by women who have tried it with their male partners. One woman described trying it as interesting, but awful and traumatizing. All six women interviewed by MTV said the contraceptive felt like a foreign body was inside their genitals. One compared it to a Ziploc bag and another to a trash bag. Below is the video of their testimonies.