Buenos Aires

Condom prices soar: With the peso slumping and inflation at more than 50 percent, Argentines are finding that the price of birth control has soared out of reach. Pharmacists in the recession-battered country say condom sales have shrunk 20 percent in recent months. And some 144,000 women have gone off the pill this year because they can no longer afford it, Isabel Reinoso, president of the Argentina Pharmaceutical Confederation, told Reuters.com. “People come in, ask about the prices, and just leave,” said Emiliano Di Ilio, a pharmacist in the Buenos Aires suburbs. Comedian Guillermo Aquino has gone viral with a sketch in which he apologizes to a potential lover, saying he only has one condom to last the rest of the year. “I love you—it’s not you,” says the humorist, “it’s the socioeconomic situation.”