Plunging oil prices mean Venezuelan women are running out of birth control
Be Chaste
Shortages of basic goods such as milk, rice, corn and diapers have resulted from state price controls .
Another victim? Birth control pills and condoms.
Venezuelan women looking for birth control pills have turned to social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, which have become informal markets where women trade contraceptive pills they don’t need, El Nacional reported Thursday.
“Without condoms we can’t do anything,” Jhonatan Rodriguez, general director at the non-governmental health organization StopVIH, told Bloomberg last year. Experts have been warning of the potentially devastating consequences of the contraceptive shortage in a country that already has one of the highest rates of HIV infection and teenage pregnancy in the region.
The lack of contraception could also lead to more pregnant women seeking illegal— and potentially dangerous — abortions and more girls leaving school and young women quitting their jobs, Carlos Cabrera, vice president of the local affiliate of London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation, told Bloomberg.