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MTV has partnered with iCondom to release the iCondom iPhone app, a geo-aware map that’s part tool, part crowdsourced experiment.
With the app, users can search via GPS for the nearest place that sells condoms. Much of the information, however, will be crowdsourced. Users are encouraged to add condom-dispensing locations and to provide quick tips like if the shop is open 24 hours or if a machine is broken.
The app is part of MTV’s Staying Alive campaign, its global youth HIV awareness and prevention effort. The crowdsourced nature of the app encourages a supporting community that can hopefully remove the taboo of buying contraceptives. The information will eventually be used to create a global condom distribution map, allowing more people to avoid putting themselves or others at risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
iCondom is well-timed with a controversial new government health care plan that would eliminate out-of-pocket costs for women’s birth control. Condom controversy usually revolves around a condom’s ability to prevent pregnancy rather than its ability to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. The MTV campaign focuses on the latter even as it enters a climate of increased exposure and debate around sexual preventative care.
Recent numbers from UNICEF estimate that 5 million 15- to 24-year-olds are living with HIV and another 2,500 young people are infected every day. The app is free to download [iTunes link]. Any profit generated through iCondom’s adverts will be split three ways between Staying Alive, the developers and Scarlett Mark, which helped create the campaign.
Source :- http://mashable.com
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