KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) - Women in a rural village in Nepal have been mailing condoms to their husbands working abroad to protect them from sexually transmitted diseases, a news report said Tuesday.

The women in Pang village, in the midwestern mountains of Nepal, have been writing to their husbands urging them not to have sex with other women, but also mailing them condoms so that if they are unfaithful, at least they will have safe sex.

The Kantipur newspaper said that social workers have been counseling women in this remote village about sexually transmitted diseases over the past two years.

"As I learned that unsafe relations make a person vulnerable to HIV, I sent a condom along with the letters to my husband," the newspaper quoted local resident Laxmi Sunar as saying.

An estimated 3 million Nepalese work in foreign countries to support their families back in Nepal, mostly manual work in the construction industry.