ICFP2022: How ‘Mr. Condom’ Demystified Contraceptives In Thailand

By Chioma Umeha On Jan 25, 2023

Mechai Viravaidya during one of his campaigns, blowing up condoms or filling them with water to promote their use. Credit: ICFP2022

•••Proves Successful Family Planning Programmes Implementation Possible In Nigeria

•••Experts Call On Countries To Adopt Mechai’s Model 

LAGOS – Many excited guests at the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP2022) were eager to meet Mechai Viravaidya, Thailand’s social activist who demystified condom use and other forms of contraceptives in Thailand.

Interestingly, the site visit to the award-winning Cabbages and Condoms restaurant, founded by Mechai was among the earliest event that preceded the opening conference plenary in Pattaya, Thailand.

The seemingly untiring Mechai despite being now in his early 80s took the media team through an exploratory journey of his adventure in promoting family planning, health and development.

Nigeria’s Independent CHIOMA UMEHA, an ICFP2022 Media Scholar, was in the tour team who interviewed Mechai, Chairman of the Population and Community Development Association (PDA) reports:

Thailand like Nigeria and some other African nations used to be a country where conversations about sex and contraceptives were considered taboo, but Mechai broke the jinx.

Mechai, an economist, started his career at Thailand’s economic planning agency. As a government economist, he toured the country and saw firsthand the poverty and the social and economic dislocations that he later devoted his life to addressing. It was there that Mechai discovered that his country was experiencing alarming population growth.

Then, the average Thai family had seven children and the annual population growth rate was over three percent. Most women didn’t have – or even know about – basic birth control.

Mechai Viravaidya and CHIOMA UMEHA, ICFP2022 Media Scholar and Nigeria’s Independent Newspapers Health Editor during the site visit to the award-winning Cabbages and Condoms restaurant, founded by Mechai organised by the International Conference on Family Planning(ICFP2022) in Pattaya, Thailand, recently.

“There were children everywhere,” he said of Thai villages. “This was the great problem. And I realised I was wrong in thinking the government could do everything. So, I decided to go out on my own.”

Worried about Thailand’s future, Mechai left the government and launched an organisation called the Population and Community Development Association (PDA) in 1974 to promote family planning. Today, PDA now covers a wide range of social and economic issues, from rural development to environmental protection, not just family planning.

From the start, Mechai took an unorthodox approach to promote safe sex. At the time, Thailand had few doctors, so PDA trained nurses and midwives educated couples about family planning strategies. He made contraceptives readily available from the smallest roadside stand to the biggest stores and taught people that there was no reason to be shy about talking about sexual health. 

Using Dramatic Humour To Inspire Contraceptive Use 

He won over his audiences with humour, using condoms as batons in school relay races and hosting vasectomy festivals where men were rewarded with a free hot dog for undergoing the procedure. Thanks to these and other efforts, Thailand’s annual population growth fell from 3.2 percent to less than one percent today.

The social activist from Thailand has fashioned the contraceptives into colourful hats, dresses, shirts, suits and other sartorial creations.

His resilience in promoting condom use with spectacle and humour earned him names, including, “Mr. Condom,” or “The Condom King,” in Thailand.

“In Thailand, a condom is not what people refer to when they want one. Instead, they call it by the name of the person who showed them how important it is to use one; they request a “Mechai,” the social-economic activist told journalists.

Mechai, obviously, took on the subject that no one else would, leading a national campaign to promote and demystify contraceptives.

Some found his approaches annoying, or even worse, not pleasant. A newspaper columnist recommended that people start referring to condoms as ‘mechais’ in an effort to come up with a new slur. The concept picked up steam, and Mechai had a copy of the story framed and hung on his wall. Everything culminated in more publicity, which was his powerful tool.

“It wasn’t a job for intelligent people, smart people, respectable people, aristocratic people,” Mechai said. Mechai, now 81, is in fact all of these, the husband of a former private secretary to the king and, over the years, a government minister, organisational leader and senator. But he is also brave, unpretentious and always willing to put on a show to persuade people.

He claimed that the family planning campaign’s objective was to elevate condoms to the status of other market staples like soap, toothpaste, and dried fish.

He figured it would be easier to accomplish if condoms were associated with something amusing, something that made people laugh.

“If I can accomplish that by blowing up condoms or filling them with water,” he said, “then fine, I’ll do it.”

He toured the country, village to village, with an endless array of gimmicks and publicity stunts that linked condoms with fun. Filling them up with water past the point of breaking was a staple performance.

“Who can blow up the biggest condom?” he would call out to the crowds. 

“Who can make it burst!”

He opened what he called family planning “supermarkets” at bus stations to distribute contraceptives and persuade Buddhist monks to bless condoms, distributing videos of the ceremonies. To educate younger Thais, he produced a safe-sex English alphabet that included letters like B for birth control, C for condom and V for vasectomy.

The campaign had a solid framework behind it that was adding to the show. A network of 350,000 teachers and 12,000 rural community leaders were recruited and trained by him. And he didn’t limit his family planning efforts only to condoms. In Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, he offered mass free vasectomies on a parade ground near the palace to celebrate the king’s birthday.

All of it built up to increased publicity, which was his major tool, and  the outcomes of his campaign were incredible.

Thailand’s population growth rate fell from more than three percent in 1974 to 0.6 percent in 2005, and the average number of children per family shrank from seven to fewer than two.

In 1970, both Thailand and the Philippines had equivalent populations of 36 million.

“Now we have about 70 million and they have 107 million,” Mechai told the ICFP2022 Media Scholars in an interview, actually understating the Philippines population, which is over 110 million.

He added that if Thailand hadn’t addressed its population issue, it would be sending millions of its citizens abroad to find work. “If we hadn’t stepped in it would have been to the deep detriment of the economy of Thailand and the quality of life,” he said.

The World Can Learn From Mechai’s Efforts – Bill Gates

Applauding Mechai in his write-up, Bill Gates said, “Mechai once gave my dad a baseball hat made from hundreds of condoms. He wore the cap at our foundation’s annual meeting, earning big laughs from the staff.

The world can continue to learn from Mechai’s efforts to expand access to contraceptives. Far too many people become infected with HIV each year. Too often, the people facing the greatest risk – including young women, sex workers, men who have sex with men and people who use drugs – do not have access to the contraceptives they need to protect themselves.

Better access to contraceptives is also critical for family planning. When couples have access to Contraceptives – including ones that women control, unlike condoms – they are more likely to have smaller families, women are freer to work outside the home, and fewer women die from unsafe abortions or pregnancy-related complications. Communities benefit too because parents can devote more resources to their children’s health and education – setting them up for more  productive futures,” Bill Gates wrote.

Similarly, the World Bank called Mechai’s campaign “one of the most successful and effective family planning programmes in the world.”

PDA Growth And Expansion

Today, PDA has grown and expanded to address a range of social and economic issues, from rural development to environmental protection, not just family planning.

Mechai’s work with PDA helped prepare Thailand for its biggest health challenge of the 1980s and 1990s: HIV/AIDS. When the AIDS epidemic came to Thailand, Mechai and PDA responded with prevention programs targeting those at greatest risk, including sex workers and their clients. PDA launched roving HIV testing vans and established AIDS education theme nights in the country’s red-light districts.

When the AIDS pandemic began to overwhelm Thailand in the late 1980s, Mechai employed the same knack for publicity, persuasiveness and showmanship in combating the disease.

Similar to his previous condom campaign, he had to start out on his own because the government was reluctant to support a safe-sex campaign for fear that it would damage the lucrative sex-tourism sector.

As a result, Mechai resorted to the military, a strong organization beyond the purview of civilian government, which agreed to broadcast frequent safe-sex announcements on its 300 radio stations and five television stations.

Then in 1991, a new prime minister, Anand Panyarachun, embraced AIDS prevention, making Mechai his minister of information and tourism. Every government ministry was now called on to play a role in AIDS education.

“We had condoms out everywhere on the streets – everywhere, everywhere,” Mechai told the Media Scholars describing his approach. “In taxis, you get condoms, and also, in traffic, the policemen give you condoms.”

Independent Newspapers reports that Thailand was chosen to host this year’s conference due to its outstanding performance on the provision of birth control to those who need it the most, as well as its universal health care system.

Jose G. Rimon II, Director, Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, endorsed Thailand as a model of success in implementing family planning programmes worldwide.

The study of Mechai’s model of implementing family planning programmes in Thailand shows that achieving the same in African countries like Nigeria is possible.

Again, Mechai has shown that the model of family planning programme to help countries with high population growth rates is available.

So, it is time for Nigeria and other countries that applauded Thailand and made commitments to support family planning during the ICFP2022 to emulate them and swing into action.