Condom Shortage Fuels STI Spike in Quintana Roo

Quintana Roo, Mexico — A session of the State Council on AIDS (Cosida) is scheduled for September 25 to address issues of prevalence, particularly raised by civil activist groups who are denouncing a shortage of condoms in the public health sector for distribution in disease prevention campaigns.

Roberto Guzmán, director of the organization Red Positiva, stated that it has been at least five months since they have received any condoms, a situation he described as grave given a recorded increase in sexually transmitted infections.

"In just one week, we have received reports of five cases of young people with gonorrhea and other types of such diseases," he commented.

He recalled that health authorities previously supplied the group with approximately 60,000 condoms every quarter, which were distributed among the sexually active population at a rate of 10,000 to 15,000 condoms per month. "Now the authorities are looking in Yucatan to see if there are any surplus condoms to donate to Quintana Roo," he said.

Guzmán expressed concern about the 56.3 percent prevalence rate of HIV infection, noting that infections have surged between 20 to 30 percent more than last year.

"A good job is not being done with screening or preventive actions, which is resulting in more young people between 24 and 26 years old arriving with advanced stages of AIDS, when this should not happen," he affirmed.

From April to August, the group conducted 700 diagnostic tests for HIV, of which 150, or 20 percent, were positive. He noted that increasingly younger people are becoming infected, with cases even among high school students who are already sexually active.

"Because early diagnosis is not being done, young people are arriving with a more advanced progression of the disease, in stages 3 and 4, when AIDS shows notable advancement," he stated.

The activist acknowledged that civil organizations focused on HIV have dissolved due to a lack of budget for prevention topics since 2018, when support was discontinued by order of the federal government.

He also revealed that, in a situation similar to the condom shortage, there is a lack of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) in health institutions. PrEP is a medication or injection taken by HIV-negative individuals to prevent HIV infection.

According to figures from the National Center for the Prevention and Control of HIV/AIDS in Mexico (Censida), in 2024 the infection prevalence rate in Quintana Roo was 49.7 percent per 100,000 inhabitants. However, reports on the same topic indicate that during the first half of 2025, it registered an increase to 56.3 percent, a rise of seven percentage points in one year.