Health Activists Warn Lack Of Lube Hurts HIV Prevention
Safer-sex messaging on condoms is universal but the generally poor availability of lubricants, and awareness of them, is hindering HIV prevention, health activists warn.
Some personal lubricant – or “lubeâ€- has been shown to lower the risk of HIV transmission by decreasing the risk of condoms breaking.
Despite preliminary proof of lube’s efficacy, far less of the product is procured and distributed than condoms, leading people to use alternative, sometimes harmful, substances during intercourse such as butter or petroleum jelly; oil-based lubricants weaken latex, making the condom more likely to break.
Activists say, however, that a blind spot in research on lubricants as a part of HIV prevention programmes means not enough is known about their impact on HIV risk.
Availability
A 2012 survey by The Global Forum on MSM & HIV (MSMGF), a US-based coalition focused on men who have sex with men (MSM), found that barely a quarter of the 5,000 people from 165 countries surveyed reported easy access to free lubricant. A full 25 percent said free lubricant was completely unavailable. Less than 10 percent of people living in low-income countries reported easy access.
While condoms have been part of family planning and HIV prevention work for decades, safe personal lubricant has only recently emerged as a donor priority. For example, the US government began distributing condoms in the 1970s through its aid and diplomatic missions, but its aid arm, the US Agency for International Development, only began distributing lubricant in 2008.
“Where health systems are less developed, it is critical to help establish and maintain supply chains and distribution systems, as well as support efforts to build and accurately forecast demand [for lube],†explained a representative from the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR):
Acknowledging the importance of using personal lubricants with condoms, especially during anal sex, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) decided in 2012 to include water-based lubricants in the procurement list of commodities available to governmental and non-governmental clients in low and middle-income countries.
However, outside of community-care settings, the real demand for lubricant remains largely misunderstood.
Research in Burundi found that health care providers sometimes do not provide lube to patients because they consider it to be “promoting homosexual behaviourâ€, highly-stigmatized there. With lube requests stymied in formal health care settings, NGOs can become the sole method of access.
“Key populations – such as MSM and sex workers – who need the lubricant the most, often get their health-related services from local NGOs, which are not often included in [HIV/AIDS] policies or broader [health] programmes,†explained Bidia Deperthes, a senior HIV adviser with UNFPA’s Comprehensive Condom Programming division in New York.
With these NGOs frequently absent from meetings with donors, lube demand can appear falsely low.
UNFPA, a global leader in the purchase and distribution of contraceptives, spent more than 18 percent of its 2011 budget on male condoms, but less than 0.5 percent on personal lubricants, citing donors’ and decision-makers’ lack of understanding of the true demand for the latter as one reason.
Alternatives
“Before there was lube from the outreach workers, I would use butter,†said Lucky, a transgender sex worker in Kathmandu, Nepal, who said she still uses non-lube products as lubricants when NGOs run out of money to fund free lubricant.
“The condoms would break sometimes, but at least it didn’t hurt as much,†she said.
Silicon and water-based lubricants are “condom compatible†and do not corrode latex. Other types of lubricant, including commercially-produced petroleum-based products like Vaseline, can destroy condoms and put users at risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has published a list of substances commonly used as alternatives to condom-compatible lubricant that may boost the risk of condom failure.
According to an International Rectal Microbicide Advocates (IRMA)Â 2009 study, most MSM throughout Africa are not using condom-compatible lubricant, a trend also seen in other regions facing a high burden of HIV.
A microbicide is a cream, gel, douche or an enema that may help reduce a person’s risk of HIV infection vaginally or rectally.Medical studies have shown rectal microbicides can offer protection in the absence of condoms and back-up protection if a condom breaks or slips off during anal intercourse.
Distribution and access
The American Foundation for AIDS Research and the US-based Johns Hopkins School of Public Health have identified availability of water-based lubricant and its cost as significant barriers to lubricant access in several countries including Guyana, Ukraine and China.
Lubricant is commercially categorized differently across countries – ranging from a medical device to a cosmetic product – meaning its manufacture, import and export can encounter legal and bureaucratic cross-border delays before reaching users.
Studies have found that even assuming high costs for lubricant production and distribution, “condom-compatible†lube prevention packages that include a condom plus a safe lubricant would only amount to about 1 percent of the global HIV/AIDS budget for 2011 (US$134 million).
Call for more research
Scientists have noted that even in places where lubricant is readily available and widely used,little comprehensive research has been conducted on its safety.
A 2007 global survey revealed more than 100 different types of lubricants are used worldwide during intercourse. WHO has outlined how vaginal and anal intercourse may require different types of lubricant.
“Most importantly, we need to determine the safety of sexual lubricants that are on the market already,†said Jim Pickett, chair of IRMA.
Experts see the lack of research as a disappointment 30 years into the AIDS epidemic, and as a mandate for more studies on lubricant.
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A version of this article first appeared at IRIN Plus News, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and is used by permission.
Image:Â Natalie Bailey/IRIN
Kyle Knight is a Fulbright Scholar in Nepal where his research focuses on the LGBTI rights movement. He previously worked at Human Rights Watch, where he focused on children’s rights issue. For three years, he worked as a suicide prevention counselor for LGBTQ youth at the Trevor Project in New York City. He currently sits on the Trevor Project’s Advocacy and Public Policy Committee, is the president of the Duke University LGBT Network, and a is lecturer in Gender Studies at Tribhuvan University, Nepal’s state-run university in Kathmandu. You can follow him on Twitter @knightktm.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
