News Forum - “Captain Condom” Mechai spent decades normalising condoms

[Thaiger]

A pivotal figure in battling both Thailand’s overpopulation problem of the 1970s and the AIDS epidemic beginning in the 80s, Mechai Viravaidya earned his title of Captain Condom. The controversial but charming man is now 81 years old, but Mechai famously battled for decades for birth control and sexual health so fervently that his adversaries pushed to popularise calling condoms “mechais”. In 1970, both Thailand and the Philippines had an exploding population with about 36 million people each. Now, the Philippines has tripled to over 110 million people with millions forced to go abroad to find work to support large […]

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[Chatogaster]

2 hours ago, Thaiger said:

Thailand has doubled in population to about 70 million people, but the population explosion slowed from 3% in 1974 to 0.6% in 2005 and family sizes reduced from an average of seven children to two per family.

 

Most of the article reads a bit like an obituary that was getting stale and some publisher decided not to sit on it any longer.

Unrelated to that: the quoted bit (above) was confusing to me. I guess "population explosion" should be read as "population growth", that "family size" should be completely ignored (and then replaced by something actually useful and less time-delayed like fertility rate), and that "2005" is not a special year but merely indicative of not bothering to offer up to date news.

For those interested: the fertility rate is now 1.5 (it dropped below 2 in 1993, i.e. nearly 2 generations ago). Growth rate is still a bit above 0.25. When the current (grand-)parents start kicking the bucket that will quickly (within in a decade) become negative.

(*) https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/THA/thailand/fertility-rate