Church and Philippine Health Chief Clash Over Condoms

On Feb. 14, Valentine's Day, Philippine Government Health Workers stormed the streets of Manila to give out roses and condoms to passers-by.

It was done in an order to spread awareness among the mounting HIV-positive population, to avoid unprotected sex.

However, the move was not taken well by Leaders of the powerful Roman Catholic Church. They advised people to throw away the condoms.

Bishops called the Valentine's Day distribution as immoral and asked for the resignation of Health Secretary, Esperanza Cabral, who had organized the campaign.

Last week, the bishops asked for a ban on condom advertisements.

Bishop Nereo Odchimar, President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, said, "The condom business is a multimillion dollar industry that heavily targets the adolescent market at the expense of morality and family life". He said loyalty and premarital chastity is "the only effective way to curb the spread of AIDS".

Meanwhile, on Monday, nearly 100 people campaigned against the church's position. They went outside the Bishops' Conference building in downtown Manila, hauling two baskets of inflated condoms and paper roses. They held a board reading, "Bless our reproductive right".

Cabral, the Health Secretary, said, "I feel it is just a job that I have to do because as the secretary of health I know that it is going to be very difficult for our country if we let... (AIDS) become an epidemic".