A man with a packet of condoms in Johannesburg. (AFP)

New York, June 21 (PTI): A South African doctor has designed what she claims is a new female “condom with teeth” aimed at preventing rape.

Dr Sonnet Ehlers’s female condom, called Rape-aXe, comes 40 years after she met a devastated rape victim who was like “a breathing corpse”.

“She looked at me and said: ‘If only I had teeth down there’,” Dr Ehlers, who was a 20-year-old medical researcher at the time, recalled during an interview with CNN. “I promised her I’d do something to help people like her one day.”

Now, 40 years after that meeting, Dr Ehlers has created Rape-AXe.

The condom has jagged teeth-like hooks that latch on to a man’s penis during penetration. Once it gets attached, only a doctor can remove it — a procedure Dr Ehlers hopes will be done with authorities on standby to make an arrest.

“It hurts, he cannot pee and walk when it’s on. If he tries to remove it, it will clasp even tighter. However, it doesn’t break the skin, and there’s no danger of fluid exposure,” the doctor said.

Dr Ehlers has been distributing 30,000 free condoms under supervision during the World Cup. “I consulted engineers, gynaecologists and psychologists to help in the design and make sure it was safe,” she said.

After the trial period, they will be available for about $2 a piece. “The ideal situation would be for a woman to wear this when she’s going out on some kind of blind date,” Dr Ehlers said.

Critics, however, say that the female condom is not a long-term solution and makes women vulnerable to more violence from men trapped by the device.

It’s also a form of “enslavement”, said Victoria Kajja who is a fellow for Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Uganda. “The fears surrounding the victim, act of wearing the condom in anticipation of being assaulted all represent enslavement that no woman should be subjected to.”

South Africa has one of the highest rape rates in the world, according to Human Rights Watch. Women take drastic measures to prevent rape, Dr Ehlers said, with some inserting razor blades in their private parts. “I believe something’s got to be done... and this will make some men think before they assault a woman.”