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