Today the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) South Africa invited communities to celebrate International Condom Day (ICD)with the simple message – “Just Use It!” – and put condoms, one of the most powerful and cost-effective tools in HIV and STI prevention, back in the spotlight. This year’s ICD celebration at Walter Sisulu University combined fun, creativity, and education with free condom distribution, reinforcing the message that protecting sexual health should be accessible, stigma-free, and empowering for everyone.
The surge in STI rates worldwide, particularly syphilis, is not a mystery – it is what happens when global funding diminishes and condoms are not prioritized for prevention. Without an immediate course correction, HIV will soon follow. Each condom used helps safeguard decades of progress in the global HIV response and avoids far more costly setbacks. Sustaining HIV prevention and reversing rising STIs does not require new scientific innovations—it requires political will, sustained investment, and a renewed commitment to ensuring condoms are free or affordable and widely available to those who need them most.
To address this, AHF South Africa hosted a range of ICD events across the country including in the Eastern Cape at the Walter Sisulu University, Butterworth Campus.
Activities included:
Music and mob dancing; Question and Answer games; hunting games; condom demonstrations; games on challenges in negotiating the use of condoms; information on teenage pregnancy; messages on access to free condoms on campus and in student residences. The Student Representative Council president also lead a debate on condom use.
“While HIV and STI burdens remain high across the continent, particularly syphilis and congenital syphilis, Africa is forced to do more with less, making prevention more important than ever,” said Martin Matabishi, AHF Africa Bureau Chief. “Condoms are cheap, effective, and proven, yet too often people can’t get them or face stigma for using them. With donor funding shrinking, governments must step up domestic health financing and remove barriers to access, which helps ensure condoms are freely and widely available. Cutting prevention now only leads to more infections, higher costs, and lives lost later.”
Launched by AIDS Healthcare Foundation in 2009, International Condom Day (Feb. 13) celebrates condoms as the world’s best option for preventing HIV, other STIs, and unplanned pregnancies. ICD reminds us that condoms are safer, sexy, and must be kept at the center of protecting sexual health worldwide: “Just Use It!”
Visit LOVEcondoms.org to learn more and check out AHF’s recent Global Public Health Revolution podcast episode “Safer Is Sexy: Condoms & Creative Health Campaigns” for a conversation all about condoms—their role in saving lives, breaking taboos, and shaping public health campaigns worldwide.
