WITH 5.7 MILLION CASES OF PEOPLE INFECTED WITH HIV SOUTH AFRICA DOUBLES IT'S CONDOM SUPPLY JUST IN TIME FOR THE 2010 WORLD CUP!

Supplies of condoms will be doubled during next summer's 2010 World Cup in South Africa, which has about 5.7 million cases of HIV - more than any other country, according to Africa News.

Medical authorities in South Africa say they want to make sure there are plenty around in time for the games, which will be held in June and July.

"There's going to be a large number of people who will be descending onto the country," said Victor Ramathesele, general medical officer for South Africa's 2010 organizing committee. "There's going to be a spirit of festivity and there could be a more than usual demand for measures such as condoms. So there are measures in place to ensure that the condom supply is going to be ramped up during this tournament."

After years when the South African government failed to provide out lifesaving HIV/AIDSdrugs, the nation now has the world’s biggest anti-retroviral program.

Medical committee chairman Michael D’Hooghe of FIFA (the International Federation of Association Football) noted that besides AIDS prevention, the football body will target tuberculosis and malaria.

"In every competition of FIFA, when we send information to the participating teams, we also take very clearly the attention of the dangers in the countries and that's not only in South Africa," he said. "Here it is perhaps more frequently present than in other countries, but we have to be careful everywhere in the world."

Dr. Jeffrey Parsons, chair of the department of psychology at New York's Hunter College, who has done AIDS research, says the condom distribution program is "a great and thoughtful" approach to a potentially large problem this summer.

But, he adds, it seems primarily aimed at protecting visitors to South Africa.

"It would be nice if as much effort went into protecting their own country," Parsons says. "It's one thing to recognize that the country has a problem with HIV and to want to protect foreigners. But if some of these resource efforts went into protecting the people in South Africa, it would ultimately have a bigger effect on the AIDS problem."

But condoms should be viewed as an important tool in controlling AIDS in South Africa, says Tamar Jehuda-Cohen, an infectious disease specialist and the inventor of a test to detect the presence of AIDS.

"Trying to change behaviors has not been that effective, and one challenge that we face is the window period, after a person gets infected but before he is making antibodies yet," she explains. "At that point, the person is infected and infectious but doesn’t know it. So condoms can be very effective."