By Lucila Sigal
BUENOS AIRES, Sept 19 (Reuters) - In South America's capitalof romance, Argentine lovers are cutting back on one importantcost: contraception.
Amid a biting recession, a sharp currency devaluation andpainful inflation, sales of condoms and birth control pills havetumbled, pharmacists and manufacturers say.
"The devaluation of the peso is killing me," actor and comicGuillermo Aquino jests in one viral video, in which a young manapologizes to a potential partner, saying he has only one condomleft until the end of the year.
"I love you, it's not you, it's the socio-economicsituation," adds the humorist.
Underneath the comedy is a bleaker reality.
South American's No. 2 economy is expected to shrink 2.6%this year and is grappling with 50%-plus annual inflation. Thepeso currency has lost two thirds of its value against thedollar since the start of 2018, hammering imports andconsumption.
Domestic sales of cars, wines and meat have dipped aswallets have been squeezed. Industry sources estimated condomsales are down 8% since the start of the year compared to 2018,and have fallen by a quarter over recent months as the economiccrisis has worsened.
Most condoms, or the materials needed to make them, areimported, so a weaker currency has an immediate impact on theprice, up some 36% since the start of the year, said FelipeKopelowicz, president of Kopelco, manufacturer of Tulipán andGentleman condom brands.
Sales of birth control pill sales are also down - 6% for theyear and by a fifth more recently, pharmacists said.
Isabel Reinoso, president of the Argentina PharmaceuticalConfederation, told Reuters price rises meant thousands of womenwere going off the pill. "It's around 144,000 women who havestopped taking contraceptives each month," she said.
RISKY ENCOUNTERS
Public health experts said the issue could aggravate levelsof sexually transmitted disease.
"When you're just thinking about getting by day to day,health is often relegated and sexual health, which is stilltaboo and has little support, even more so," said Mar Lucas,program director at Fundación Huésped, an Argentine non-profitorganization fighting HIV.
The government does distribute free condoms in publichospitals, but few know about it, she said.
"We know they are rarely used, misused and usedinconsistently. And so we keep having a lot of sexuallytransmitted infections," added Lucas.
Argentina's Ministry of Health did not respond to requestsfor comment from Reuters.
Emiliano Di Ilio, a pharmacist working in the suburbs ofBuenos Aires, told Reuters that steep inflation had caused salesof condoms and contraceptive pills in his pharmacy to fall by20% and 25% respectively in the last two months.
"People come, ask the price, and then just leave," he said.
(Reporting by Lucila Sigal; Editing by Adam Jourdan and RosalbaO'Brien)