Thailand's Mr. Contraception

Making family planning fun with games like "cops and rubbers"

Mechai Viravaidya's calling card is a condom. In Bangkok, ambassadors invite him to formal dinners, knowing that he will probably use the occasion to blow up a bright red prophylactic for the host and pass out multicolored birth control pills to the ladies. Sometimes he brings along his latest line in antifertility T shirts or panties bearing the message A CONDOM A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY. Once he passed out free condoms to the entire Bangkok police force, then announced it as his "cops and rubbers" program.

Mechai's antic approach to family planning has made him a national hero. Condoms are now known as Mechais, a fact that he frequently bewails in mock despair. Half Scottish and related to the King of Thailand by marriage, Mechai, 40, is an economist by profession and, as director of Community-Based Family Planning Services, a performer by necessity. As most of the nation now knows, he will do anything to get his message across. Last year, on the King's birthday, he offered free vasectomies (146 accepted). He makes a prize stud hog available at half price to farmers who agree to practice contraception. He persuaded 241 Bangkok cab drivers to dispense condoms along with family-planning advice, and pays the taxi insurance for cabbies who send in 50 or more people for sterilization; so far, six drivers have qualified. At village fairs and festivals, he shows up in a well-polished minibus to deliver his snake-oil monologue on the glories of contraception, organizing balloon-blowing ontests with condoms and teaching youngsters his hard-hitting song Too Many Children Make You Poor. Says he: I wanted to remove the taboo, take birth control out of the realm of the secretive and make it fun."

Mechai's gimmicky campaign has been spectacularly successful in breaking down Thai inhibitions about contraception. The nation's population of 47.3 million is now growing at a rate of only 1.9% a year, against 3.3% a decade ago. Granted, much of the credit goes to the government, which aggressively pushes free condoms and pills. But some think Mechai, the father of one child, has done at least as much as the bureaucracy. His flair has popularized the program, and his private network of distributors has spread contraceptives deep into remote rural areas.

The vehicle for that network is his Family Planning Services, an organization funded by the Thai government and private grants from foundations in Japan, Canada and the U.S. The group has recruited residents of 16,000 villages to peddle pills and condoms: rice farmers, shopkeepers, silk weavers, fruit vendors, at least one undertaker and a golf caddy. "They are all respected people in the community," he says. "They are trusted." The volunteer family planners also help run Mechai's nonpregnancy agricultural credit program, which offers low-cost loans to farmers who avoid pregnancy until the loan is repaid.

Several factors help make family planning easier in Thailand than in other countries. One is the lack of strong religious and cultural barriers to contraception. Mechai has monks bless his contraceptive shipments and points out that Buddha had only one son. Another factor: Thai women have a high literacy rate and seem receptive to modern family planning. Says Mechai: "Thais are very sensible people. If something makes sense and works, they'll accept it."

Now Mechai, well known in U.N. family-planning circles, is branching out. The People's Republic of China called him in as a consultant last summer; he advised the Chinese to print contraceptive information on towels, ice cream sticks and bottle caps. In honor of Ronald Reagan's Inauguration, he sent the President and his wife a note saying, "We wish you and your friends increased productivity, subdued fertility and a better life for the New Year." He also sent along a box of Mechais and a card good for one free vasectomy.

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