Julia Nabasa had almost given up on her quest to find a family planning method, which was gentle to her body yet highly effective.

“The introduction of MoonBeads as a form of contraceptive, came as a beautiful surprise to me seeing that it was  natural and had no side effects,” says 29 year old Julia Nabasa.

The mother of three says that the concept behind MoonBeads is a welcome relief for her and many other women, whose bodies have rejected other forms of contraceptives. 

“But that is not to say that women who use other modern methods of contraceptives cannot use it.”

Julia is just one of the many Ugandan women, who have found solutions to their family planning problems in the MoonBeads.

This method, which was introduced in Uganda about four years ago, has had the First Lady, Janet Museveni, at the forefront in popularizing it.

This form of contraceptive was launched by AFFORD, with an aim to assist women identify their menstrual cycle days with ease.

AFFORD Health Marketing Initiative is a USAID funded project with a focus on key public health interventions such as family planning. 

Lucy Kabatebe, a registered nurse at Reproductive Health Uganda., says that MoonBeads have a success rate of about 95 percent when instructions are well followed. 

“MoonBeads are actually based on the ‘safe days’ concept, it’s a totally natural way of family planning,” expounds Lucy Kabatebe.

MoonBeads are a string of beads which resemble a necklace of colored beads. There are 32 beads of different colors in total, each of them represents 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,” explains Lucy Kabatebe. 

“The white 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 track the number of days in each cycle.” 

The MoonBeads concept was developed by Georgetown University Medical Centre, which among other things provides policy support in natural family planning method. 

MoonBeads have been marketed elsewhere as CycleBeads.

Despite the beauty behind this method, it takes more than will to use it. 

“A woman’s menstrual cycle must fall between 26-32 days, we advice women to stay off any other family planning method for about four months in order to make an assessment,” explains Lucy Kabatebe. 

“A woman can make her own assessment by marking the days when she begins her monthly period and see how regular they are.”

 If a woman is on a certain family planning method, she may not make a correct assessment because her hormones will have been disrupted by the method she may be using at the time.

“I did my own assessment for four months, and I have been using MoonBeads for two years now,” says Esther Nsali. 

The 25 year old mother of two says that she finds the method highly effective. 

The MoonBeads are also reasonably affordable and a woman can use one string of beads for many years. 

At the Reproductive Health Uganda, a leading non-governmental organization committed to improving provision of reproductive health, one MoonBead costs about Ushs 3,000 which is about Kshs 125. 

However, it costs more at pharmacists, shops and supermarkets that stock them, where one can buy it for about Ushs 6,000, which is about Kshs 250. 

Despite it popularity in use by some women, others have out rightly rejected it. 

This is due to the fact that it can be rather cumbersome. A woman who chooses MoonBeads as a form of contraceptives must have undivided male support. 

“Male involvement is a must for this method to work, partners have to agree on either abstinence or use a condom for the 12 days when it is possibly for a woman to conceive,” expounds Lucy Kabatebe. 

This has been one of the major drawbacks to the success of MoonBeads. 

“When a woman is on a form of contraceptive, she wants to feel like she can have sex without a worry within the period which the contraception is supposed to protect her,” says Margaret Oyundo. 

“Telling a man to abstain or to use a condom and yet you are on a form of contraceptive can cause a lot of conflict.” 

The issue of abstinence and condom use has had many men discard the method untested. This goes to show that the society, to a large extent, finds these two methods unrealistic. 

“How many men will abstain or use a condom for 12 days, when a woman has other less inconveniencing contraceptive options to chose from?” poses Job Ogwang’. 

 As far as safe sex goes, although MoonBeads can protect a woman from getting pregnant, they cannot protect partners from contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s). 

In addition, tracking down the beads each day has also been noted as another obstacle. To which Lucy Kabatebe says; 

“A woman needs to mark the day her periods begin on a calendar which also comes with the MoonBeads, if she forgets to track the beads, she only needs to go back to the calendar and solve the problem.” 

Although there are mixed feelings with regard to the convenience or inconvenience regarding MoonBeads, service providers in Uganda say that for those who can use it, and use it effectively, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.

An AWC Feature 

 This story was also published in the East African Standard and the Kenya Times