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Announcing a new, four week online forum
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The Female Condom: Accelerating Access & Use: Online Forum, October 26 -
November 22, 2005

This online forum follows a Global Consultation on the Female Condom,
held September 26-29, 2005 in Baltimore, MD. The consultation brought
together experts to review evidence of the female condom's effectiveness
in preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and
to learn about country program experiences. The consultation developed a
Plan of Action for moving forward to accelerate access to and use of the
female condom in developing countries. Discussion on the forum will
follow the themes addressed at the consultation and will extend this
discourse to a broader global community. An announcement on the Global
Consultation has additional information on the September meeting itself
at http://www.path.org/news/pr-051014-gcfc.php. In addition, all the
presentations from the Global Consultation are available online at:
http://www.path.org/projects/womans_condom_gcfc2005.php.

This online forum will be cosponsored by PATH, WHO and The INFO Project
(at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for
Communication Programs) and will be held within the Implementing Best
Practices (IBP) Electronic Communication System (ECS). This online
system already includes over 100 different communities and over 2,600
individual members. The ECS "Global Community" serves all 2,600+ members
and features a weekly newsletter, information on new publications, a
calendar of events, and other features. The web address is
www.ibpinitiative.org <http://www.ibpinitiative.org/> .

Audience for this forum: donors, researchers, women's health advocates,
program planners, product procurement specialists, and ministry of
health officials.

To focus the discussions, we have planned four different discussion
themes - one for each week:

Week 1: October 26-November 1 - Sharing country experiences with the
female condom
Week 2: November 2-8 - Current status of research findings
Week 3: November 9-15 - New products in development
Week 4: November 16-22 - Expanding access and use
 
Please join us to share your own country-based experiences, and to find
out about new products and current research.
 
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How to participate:
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To sign up for the forum, send an e-mail to [log in to unmask] with
"female condom" in the subject line.

You will become a member of the ECS "Global Community" and the "Female
Condom" community. Membership is free and can continue beyond the forum
end date. Once a member, you can also request membership in other
IBP/ECS communities.

Please include in your e-mail: 
1. your given name and surname
2. the organization where you work
3. the country where you work

You will receive an e-mail explaining how the forum will work and how to
access the ECS. We look forward to a stimulating and useful discussion.

Best regards,

PATH, INFO and the IBP

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