Swiss Promote Extra-Small Condoms for Preteen Boys

(March 4) -- The Swiss have come up with an idea that they hope might curb the growing problem of teenage pregnancy rates: extra-small condoms for boys as young as 12.

A government-backed study of 1,480 people age 10 to 20 showed that more were having sex from the ages of 12 to 14 compared with a similar study in the 1990s.

Young boys, the study showed, "have more of a tendency not to protect themselves" and do not understand "the consequences of what they are doing," a woman who headed the research, Nancy Bodmer, told The Daily Telegraph of London.

"The results of this study suggest that early prevention makes sense," she added.

As a result, family planning groups and the Swiss Aids Federation approached Lamprecht AG, a leading Swiss condom manufacturer, with a request to make a smaller product, a company spokesman told AOL News.

The spokesman, Nysse Norballe, said the product, called Hotshot, has a diameter of 1.7 inches, compared with the standard 2 inches, but that both are the same length: 7.4 inches. A six-pack costs the equivalent of $7.

According to a German study of 12,970 people age 13 to 20, the Telegraph reported, a quarter said that the standard condom was too large.

At the moment, Norballe said, the family-owned company planned to sell Hotshot only in Switzerland. Would it one day be sold in the U.S., which has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world?

"There are no plans at the moment to sell them in the U.S. in 2010, and it's very unlikely it will ever be sold there," he said. "But again, one never knows."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that in 2006, there were 435,436 births to mothers age 15 to 19 in the U.S., a birth rate of 41.9 per 1,000 women in this age group.

Nearly two-thirds of births to mothers younger than 18 and more than half to mothers age 18 to 19 years are unintended, the agency said.