HANOI, Vietnam — The police in Vietnam have seized greater than 300,000 used condoms that had been boiled, dried and put up on the market in a southern province, shutting down a enterprise that posed a well being hazard to customers.
Officers who raided a warehouse within the province of Binh Duong on Saturday discovered the recycled condoms in luggage weighing nearly 800 kilos, the state-controlled Tuoi Tre newspaper reported.
Footage broadcast by the state-owned Vietnam Tv confirmed 1000’s of prophylactics spilling out of baggage on the ground. It was unclear what led to the police raid, however news reports mentioned officers had acquired a tip from a neighborhood resident.
The police arrested a girl in reference to the operation, Pham Thi Thanh Ngoc, who instructed the authorities that she had acquired a month-to-month supply from an unknown individual and had been paid the equal of 17 cents for about each two kilos she recycled, local news outlets reported.
She instructed the police that the condoms had been recycled by a means of boiling, drying and reshaping them utilizing a picket prosthesis.
It was not identified how lengthy the enterprise had been in operation or what number of condoms had been bought. It was unclear if the lady had been charged with against the law.
Condoms are designed to be disposed of after use, and reusing them can result in breakage, slipping or leakage. The dangers are drastically multiplied if they’re utilized by a couple of individual, and might result in the unfold of sexually transmitted ailments.
Anh Nguyen, an obstetrician from Dak Lak, mentioned that recycling used condoms was “very harmful to society.”
“For revenue they’ll unfold sexually transmitted ailments similar to syphilis, gonorrhea and probably H.I.V.,” she mentioned in an interview of the warehouse enterprise. “This have to be prevented.”
However recycling condoms will not be unheard-of amongst intercourse employees, particularly in creating nations, consultants say.
“It’s not unattainable to clean a condom,” mentioned Juliet Richters, a sexual well being knowledgeable and honorary professor on the College of New South Wales. However “it’s by no means occurred, to my information, on an industrial scale,” she mentioned.
Professor Richters mentioned that they’d be troublesome to recycle with out gear to roll up and repackage the condoms to move them off as new. She mentioned it was unclear what influence boiling the condoms would have on their integrity.
In 2007, docs in China warned in opposition to utilizing rubber bands that had been manufactured from used condoms as a result of they might result in the unfold of H.I.V. — the virus that causes AIDS — and different sexually transmitted ailments.
A consultant of the Binh Duong Division of Well being mentioned well being officers had not acquired any data from provincial officers or requests for help within the investigation. Tran Van Tung, a Binh Duong official, mentioned that since this was the primary time the province had been conscious of used condoms being recycled on the market, the authorities wanted to obviously outline their authorized case.
Binh Duong Province, outdoors the southern industrial hub of Ho Chi Minh Metropolis, is plagued by industrial zones the place factories manufacture client items for export and home consumption. In 2014, employees burned dozens of foreign-owned factories within the province as half a wave of protests in opposition to China’s stationing of an oil rig in disputed waters off Vietnam’s coast.
Chau Doan reported from Hanoi, Vietnam, and Livia Albeck-Ripka from Darwin, Australia. Mike Ives contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
