New NGO to use UN as marketing tool
In what may be the first instance of a looming trend, the manufacturer of the first ever female condom has set up a non-profit foundation to both market its product in the developing world and to employ the resources of the United Nations in doing so. According to spokeswoman Rebecca Rosenberg, the newly formed Female Health Foundation (FHF), created by the Female Health Company (PHC) (manufacturer of the female condom) has already applied for United Nations’ recognition as a non-governmental organization and expects, as of press-time, to be approved “soon.” This approval would mark the first time the UN has recognized as an NGO an organization whose sole purpose is to promote a particular company’s contraceptive product.
According to its promotional press release, the Foundation is “the first not-for-profit organization exclusively dedicated to elevating awareness of women’s health issues with a specific locus on contraceptive choices.” Elevating awareness about female condoms is, as might be expected, a pretty daunting marketing job. The Foundation has accordingly decided to “develop a train-the-trainer outreach program” to convince “global providers and counselors” in the developing world “about the need and use of the female condom.”
The Foundation announcement came but one week after its parent company, Female Health, announced it will be working with the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) to supply subsidized female condoms to 160 UN member states. “Together, these international organizations will advance government public health departments’ programs for family planning,” the release said, while the Foundation will continue to provide market research by “seek[ing] out and support[ing] organizations assisting women in developed and developing countries through behavioral research, education and outreach programs…”
The return on this investment in public sector marketing has been both immediate and lucrative. According to FHC, the arrangement with UNAIDS has meant orders for seven million female condoms already and that “funding is in place for more than half this order.” FHC recently announced that it has raised at least $1.1 million in additional capital needed to meet the additional public sector business. The company added that UNAIDS is “currently assisting countries to finalize funding for the remainder.”
When asked whether, in reality, the Foundation’s work was not primarily a marketing effort, Rosenberg replied that “the lack of consumers” for the female condom in the developing world precluded the Foundation’s efforts from being anything but “humanitarian and educational in scope.” She did admit that there is nothing to prevent consumers’ purchases from being subsidized.
Female Health Company, based in Chicago, owns the worldwide rights to the female condom, including patents in the United States, Japan, the European Union, the People’s Republic of China, Canada and Australia.
Editor’s note: Both the World Bank and the United Nation’s Development Program have indicated a willingness to directly fund NGO efforts in the developing world to promote population control. These efforts are to provide the grass roots pressure which, when combined with pressure from multinational lenders and institutions, will force otherwise unwilling governments to sacrifice their own sovereignty and bend to the UN’S will on these issues. This process has already begun. In Zimbabwe an organization calling itself the Woman and AIDS Support Network (WANS) announced that it has begun petitioning the government to “make the female condom easily available” in that country. “Preliminary studies “indicate the device is too expensive for most Zimbabwean women to afford but that Zimbabwe is eligible for assistance in purchasing the device.
World population unlikely to double, group finds
Falling birthrates and a decline in fertility are radically slowing population growth worldwide, says the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. The Austrian-based non-governmental organization, in a recent study, calculates that it is unlikely that the world’s population will ever double again. Instead, IIASA projects that the world’s population will grow at an increasingly slow rate over the next century, peaking at 10.4 billion.
Editor’s note: While the IIASA report is a good antidote to some of Paul Erlich’s poisoned pen writings about population, which has us breeding ourselves off the face of the planet, it still overestimates future human fecundity. According to the US Census Bureau, there are now 79 countries — representing 40 percent of the world’s population — with below replacement rate fertility. Virtually all the developed nations will soon need more coffins than cradles each year. More surprisingly, there are now 26 “developing” countries where women are averaging fewer than 2.2 children. While the populations of portions of Asia, Africa and Latin America will continue to grow for some decades, the rest of the world will soon be in demographic free-fall. The bottom line: A population that peaks at 7 or 8 billion in the year 2040, and then begins the long descent in the demographic twilight of the human race.
