Last Friday, I spent the afternoon scouring Hartford pharmacies for female condoms, undeterred by a torrential downpour that hit the city around 3 p.m.
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I was out to prove a point to myself — that the condoms, a polyurethane sheath 98 percent effective, with inner and outer rings to keep it in place, are essentially unavailable, leaving a woman who wants to protect herself from HIV infection with one option: to convince her partner to strap on a male condom.                                                                   

That's the conclusion reached by Margaret R. Weeks, executive director of The Institute for Community Research in Hartford, and her staff of investigators who are in the midst of a four-year study titled, "Sustained Female Condom Use in High-Risk Women to Prevent HIV."

The study ends in June, but the handwriting is already on the wall.

"The problem we've found is the environment is extremely unsupportive of female condoms," said Weeks. "Go into pharmacies, good luck finding it. ... Doctors never talk about it. There's a huge prejudice against the female condom."

That prejudice can have dire consequences anywhere, but particularly in Hartford, which has the highest rate of new HIV infections and the highest number of people living with AIDS of any city in the state, according to the Connecticut Department of Public Health.

As of June 30, 2007, Hartford had 3,215 reported cases of AIDS, and 517 reported cases of HIV, with 54 new AIDS cases and 103 new HIV cases in 2007. Bridgeport, by comparison, had about half the AIDS cases, at 1,615, and considerably fewer HIV cases, at 432, with 31 new AIDS cases and 39 new HIV cases in 2007. New Haven had 2,538 AIDS cases with 28 new cases in 2007, and 369 HIV cases with 89 new cases in 2007.

For the entire state, a total of 17,478 HIV/AIDS cases have been reported since 1981, with 7,668 deaths. The diagnosis rate is astronomically higher in blacks and Hispanics — at 53.0 and 58.1 per 100,000 respectively — than in whites, at 6.3 per 100,000.

Weeks said nationwide HIV infection is spreading most rapidly among heterosexual women, who are at the greatest risk from their primary intimate relationships, where trust becomes an issue. If you love me, you won't make me use a condom.

"Negotiating male condoms in that circumstance is very difficult," Weeks said. "Convincing him to put it on, it all comes down to that. If he doesn't like the feel and doesn't want to do it, you can't make him."

In my search for female condoms, I went to CVS pharmacies on both Wethersfield and Maple avenues, Walgreens on Washington Street and Farmington Avenue, Brooks Pharmacy on Franklin Avenue, and Rite-Aid on Albany Avenue.

In those six pharmacies, I found just two boxes of female condoms, one each at Brooks Pharmacy on Franklin and Rite-Aid on Albany Avenue and both on the bottom shelf. At Brooks, a five-pack was $13.99, while at Rite-Aid it was $14.99.

Compare that to the raft of male condoms I found everywhere I looked, dominating shelf space in every pharmacy I visited. While male condoms were available for as little as 52 cents per use, female condoms ran at least $2.79 per use.

"Price is a big drawback, availability is a huge drawback," said Laurie Sylla, international/community research director at the Yale AIDS program. "And it's a method you have to get used to. People look at [the female condom] and they get scared. 'Oh my god, what do I do with that?'"

Sasha Segarra, a pharmacy tech at the CVS on Maple, said she could remember only one request for female condoms in five years. And Tawona Dukes, in charge of inventory at Walgreens on Washington Street, said they used to sell female condoms but pulled the dusty boxes for good two years ago.

"They just sat on the shelf, none sold," said Dukes. "If they were cheaper, females might get them."

My Friday afternoon foray was only confirming what Weeks and her team have exhaustively established over several years of the female condom study, involving 500 women. ICR staff regularly visits 16 pharmacies, 14 health or service organizations, six clinics, five HIV programs, four grocery stores, three adult entertainment stores and one head shop.

Their conclusions: Female condoms are "essentially unavailable" at pharmacies and grocery stores in Hartford. Some social service and most AIDS organizations give them out for free, but have limited quantities, porn shops that have them charge up to $20 for a five-pack, more than the already high retail price.

Yet the study has also shown that among the 500 participants, the percentage who use the female condom regularly went from 3.2 percent to 14.3 percent in 10 months.

"The story here is if we don't change the environment women can't adopt this in an effective way as part of their prevention repertoire because it's not available, even though there are women who would really benefit and would use it," Weeks said.