In a world filled with e-mail, e-cards and e-commerce, perhaps it was no surprise that the e-condom was next.

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which introduced the city’s official condom on Valentine’s Day two years ago, has introduced a Facebook page and Facebook application to promote the use of condoms. The new page is the latest phase in a campaign that started in 2007, when New York City launched the nation’s first branded city condom. Monthly distribution at clinics, clubs, salons and other venues has since doubled, reaching more than 3 million condoms per month. Together, the Health Department and it’s numerous community partners have distributed some 70 million NYC condoms since the launch.

Last year industrial designer Yves Behar, founder of the San Francisco-based fuseproject firm, gave the condom a fresh look with a new wrapper and a sleek dispenser, which won an International Design Excellence Award from Business Week and the Industrial Designers Society of America. It also won a 2008 Spark Award.

While city health officials last July created a MySpace environment for teenagers to discuss mental health and substance abuse issues, they said the latest effort represented their most ambitious use yet of social networking technology to encourage safer sexual practices.

As of Wednesday afternoon, nearly 1,500 e-condoms, as the Facebook messages are called, had been circulated through the site. The application includes a ranking that displays who has sent the most e-condoms, though several on the list — Jessica Scaperotti, Sheryl Tirol-Goodwin, Geoffrey Cowley, Sara Markt and Celina De Leon — were employees of the health department’s communications office.

Facebook has a stronger following in New York City than in the country as a whole, according to usage surveys. And STD information is one of the city’s top 10 Internet search topics. “By using Facebook, we can help millions of people spread the word about condoms,” said Dr Monica Sweeney, the assistant health commissioner for HIV prevention and control.

Despite recent gains in condom awareness, HIV and other STDs are prevalent in New York City. Approximately 14 New Yorkers are newly infected with HIV every day, while 30 New Yorkers contract gonorrhea and 160 contract chlamydia. The Health Department promotes testing and treatment to control these infections, but partner reduction and consistent condom use are the surest ways to reduce the risk. Clicking on the Facebook page reveals facts that the health department hopes to impress on residents. New York City has more Aids cases than Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Washington combined. More than 100,000 New York City residents are HIV-positive. One of every 25 men living in Manhattan, and one of every four men who have sex with men in the Chelsea neighborhood, is HIV-positive.

In the original design, the letters “NYC Condom” were printed in white or black letters against colorful circles, evoking the letter symbols the Metropolitan Transportation Authority uses to represent subway lines. Last year’s redesign features the letters “NYC” in black against three interlocking circles, with the word “Condom” underneath, each of the six letters in a different colour.

— New York Times