MoonBeads, the easy, natural family planning method

Oct 10, 2006

WOMEN have for long used ‘safe days’ as a natural family planning method. But for many, it has been a mystery and guesswork. The head of Marketing AFFORD, David Kanyoro, said surveys show that most women cannot predict their menstrual cycle.

By Irene Nabusoba
WOMEN have for long used ‘safe days’ as a natural family planning method. But for many, it has been a mystery and guesswork. The head of Marketing AFFORD, David Kanyoro, said surveys show that most women cannot predict their menstrual cycle. “In Uganda, only 17.9% are able to correctly identify their fertile days,” he said. Only 18% of married women use modern contraceptive methods while 35% are estimated to be in the unmet need of family planning. No wonder, Uganda has one of the highest fertility rates in the world, at 6.9% and this has partly been attributed to the low contraceptive prevalence.
Last week, AFFORD launched the MoonBeads as one of its health products to assist women identify their cycle days with ease. AFFORD Health Marketing Initiative is a $39m five-year USAID funded project with a focus on key public health interventions in areas like family planning.
Launching the MoonBeads at Hotel Africana, the First Lady Janet Museveni, said family planning was good, but warned that introducing the method in a largely backward population was a challenge.
MoonBeads are a string of coloured beads that can help a woman know her fertile days. There are 32 beads of different colour, which represent a woman’s menstrual cycle. Each bead is a day of the cycle. There is a black rubber ring and a cylinder with an arrow. The arrow shows the direction to move the ring, the red bead marks the first day of your period, the glow-in-the dark green beads mark the day you can get pregnant, all brown beads mark the days you are least likely to conceive and the dark brown bead helps you know if your cycle is shorter than 26 days.
“The day you get your period, move the ring to the red bead,” Lucy Kabatebe, a master trainer with AFFORD explained. “Mark that day on your calendar. Move the rings every day. If you forget, check on your calendar the date you got your last period; starting with that day, count the number of days that have passed; then starting with the red bead, count the same number of beads and place the ring on the bead for that day.”
This method only applies to women with cycles between 26 and 32 days who, according to research, make up 80% of all women in the world.
The moon beads concept was developed by Georgetown University Medical Centre, which conducts research, advances scientific information, and provides policy support in natural family planning and fertility awareness. They have been marketed elsewhere as CycleBeads.
The demand for the beads has been rated high and feedback shows that couples use the method in combination with condoms.
In Brazil, where a study on their practicability was done, moon beads were third in prevalence of use, after condoms and the pill.
Tremendous success has also been reported in Rwanda and Zambia. Government and faith-based organisations have even made it easier by endorsing it without reservations because it is a natural and safe method of contraception.
Kabatebe says the Moon Beads system, which uses the Standard Days Method (SDM), is more than 95% effective if used correctly. They help a woman to know her fertile days and if she does not want to conceive, she avoids unprotected sex during that time,” Kabatebe says.
According to Science Daily, an online publication, SDM is based on sophisticated computer modelling of reproductive physiology data. It identifies the 12-day “fertile window” of a woman’s menstrual cycle. These 12 days take into account the life span of the woman’s egg (about 24 hours) and the viable life of sperm (about five days) as well as the variation in the actual timing of ovulation from one cycle to the next. The study found the efficacy of the SDM to be comparable to or better than a number of other widely used methods of family planning, including the diaphragm and condom.
Georgetown Institute for Reproductive Health conducted a research to evaluate the effectiveness of the SDM of family planning for 478 women in Bolivia, Peru and the Philippines. After following the women for over 13 cycles, they came up with CycleBeads which they said worked best for women whose cycles are usually between 26 and 32 days long. Kanyoro says the method does not require expensive commodities, can be provided by both clinics and at community level, is culturally appropriate, and makes family planning a shared responsibility for the couple. He says the method targets couples rather than just the women, for faster acceptance and to facilitate and improve couple communication.
The beads cost sh6,000 and can be got through various NGO networks, faith-based organisations, as well as the private sector distribution channels like pharmacies, drug shops, supermarkets and general merchandise outlets.
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