Condom shortage hits Cuba

Posted on Wednesday, 04.16.14



Condom shortage hits Cuba

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM



First, potatoes disappeared from Cuban markets. They are back, but

police are struggling to keep throngs of frantic buyers in check. And

now there are shortages of beer and condoms, with some shops charging up

to $1.30 for each prophylactic.



Havana blogger Miriam Celaya wrote that a woman friend had joked that if

in the 1990s she had to buy condoms instead of hard-to-find balloons for

her son's birthday party, today she might have to buy him balloons so he

can practice safe sex.



Cuban ruler Raúl Castro has repeatedly declared that the island is

moving, slowly but steadily, away from its highly inefficient Soviet

economic model and toward a more-productive system that mixes socialism

with small doses of private enterprise.



Yet Cubans are complaining almost daily about shortages, sometimes in

one province and not in another, sometimes in some stores and not

others, and sometimes about one item and not another — for instance, no

galvanized roofing sheets but lots of nails.



Havana author Polina Martínez Shvietsova wrote that the shortage of

condoms in state-run pharmacies started about 15 days ago, although

shops that cater mostly to foreigners still sell the prophylactics at

$1.30 each — a day's wage for the average Cuban.



"In the great majority of pharmacies in the [Havana] municipality of

Playa, there's a shortage," she wrote. "In the municipality of Plaza, in

the pharmacy at 23rd and 24th Streets, the salespeople said, 'We have

none, and we don't know when they will arrive.' . . .



"Nevertheless, all of the pharmacies that have no condoms do have signs

recommending safe sex," Martinez wrote in her report published in

Cubanet, a Miami-based website for independent journalists.



The Communist Party's newspaper in the province of Villa Clara,

Vanguardia, tried to explain the reasons for the condom shortage in an

April 3 report, and all but drowned in a sea of unanswered questions and

typically complex acronyms for government agencies.



CECMED, a state agency that tests medicines and medical items, ruled in

2012 that the "Moment" condoms bought from China had the wrong

expiration date and ordered that they be repackaged showing they are

good until 2014, according to the newspaper.



But ENSUME, the state-run wholesaler that supplies EMCOMED, which in

turn supplies condoms to state pharmacies, restaurants and camping

grounds, simply has not been able to repackage them quickly enough,

Vanguardia added.



ENSUME director Juan Carlos Gonzalez said his enterprise has more than

one million condoms in its warehouses, the newspaper reported. But its

workers can repackage only 1,440 strips of three per day, and the

province alone requires about 5,000 per day.



Vanguardia writer Leslie Díaz Monserrat noted that condoms prevent the

spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and HIV, and

that their absence leads to unwanted pregnancies and abortions. But

Gonzalez offered no solution to the shortage.



Diaz also wondered in her report why ENSUME waited from 2012 until now

to repackage the condoms, but apparently got no answer from Gonzalez.

"There will have to be an internal analysis of the matter to resolve"

the issue, she wrote.



Celaya wrote earlier this month in her blog Sin Evasion ("Without

Evasion") that the chronic shortages on the island seemed to be more

frequent and affecting more products, including some that are usually

widely available at steep, hard-currency prices.



Toilet paper is now in short supply, she wrote, while toothpaste and

toothbrushes and soap have been taking turns disappearing from shelves

and forcing a "perennial peregrination after articles that in any part

of the civilized world are common."



One independent journalist reported this week that the Cuban-brewed

Bucanero and Cristal brands of beer had suffered "a sudden

disappearance" from shelves, and another wrote that some doctors are

using toilet paper in place of hard-to-find medical gauze.



Other Havana residents in recent months have reported rolling shortages

of deodorant, eggs, cooking oil, floor-cleaning rags and many medicines.



As for the return of potatoes, Celaya wrote, "police in Centro Habana

[municipality] are practically on a war footing taking care of the

brawls produced within the huge crowds that aspire to buy the longed-for

tuber."



Havana blogger Francisco Castro wrote on April 11 that while potatoes

are back on the shelves, the huge crowds waiting in line to buy them

reminded him of the massive "anti-imperialist" marches that former ruler

Fidel Castro used to organize in Havana.



Source: Condom shortage hits Cuba - Cuba - MiamiHerald.com -

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/16/4063871/condom-shortage-hits-cuba.html