The announcement of the link between the Zika virus and childhood microcephaly had no effect on sales of contraceptive products for female use in Brazil, including traditional pills, morning-after pills, implants and intrauterine devices (IUDs). There was no increase in the consumption of these contraceptives, even after the Ministry of Health, in November 2015, warned Brazilian women who wanted children to postpone their plans, in view of the epidemic.
The data, which appears in the article "Contraceptive sales in the setting of the Zika virus epidemic", published in the journal Human Reproduction, should serve as a warning for summer 2017, when cases of diseases transmitted by mosquitoes will increase again Aedes aegypti, and represent yet another sign of the “debacle” of the national family planning system, says the main author of the work, researcher Luis Bahamondes, from the Family Planning Clinic of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM) at Unicamp .
The article focuses on the sales figures for contraceptives, between September 2014 and August 2016, provided by two pharmaceutical companies, one Brazilian and one multinational, who asked not to be identified. “They treat these numbers as if they were a state secret,” said the researcher.
The text of the article recognizes that the work has limitations – for example, condom sales were not monitored – but offers the interpretation that the stability in numbers does not seem to reflect women's indifference to the Zika issue, but rather the difficulty of access to contraceptive methods that are more effective than common pills, such as IUDs.
Bahamondes says that it would be “simplistic” to blame only governments — at the federal, state and municipal levels — for the situation, although he recognizes that a system that, in practice, relies on the sale of pills over the pharmacy counter is “comfortable” for the State . He also points out problems in the training of health professionals, the concentration of family planning in the hands of doctors, as nurses could also be trained for the activity, and a widespread social indifference towards the issue. “It is society as a whole that does not move. Society moved to obtain antiretrovirals for people living with HIV, and it was successful”, he compares.
“Proof” that the bottleneck is in access to methods, and not in the interests of women, can be found at the Unicamp outpatient clinic, said Bahamondes. “The demand here is monstrous,” he said.
“This article is a warning sign,” he said. “But a warning sign that does not point to blame. Because there are many people responsible: society, medical schools, nursing schools, medical societies, medical residency programs”.