In September we reported on a male contraceptive called Vasalgel, a gel which is inserted into the vas deferens and blocks the exit of sperm. According to scientists, it wouldn't be ready until 2017 – but they might have just been beaten to the punch by some Indonesian researchers.

USA Today reports that a team of researchers from Airlangga University say that they've created a male pill that is almost foolproof. The contraceptive is derived from gendarussa, a native shrub that grows on the Indonesian island of Papua.

Local tribesman have apparently known about the contraceptive qualities of the plant for a long time, preferring to boil gendarussa into a tea and drinking it half an hour before sex.

Scientists have been testing pills made from the gendarussa shrub on men and they're pretty confident it stops babies. Bambang Prajogo, who heads up the team of researchers, says that it's "99% effective", with many successful trials and a projected release date of 2016.

The pill works by weakening the enzymes in sperm that enable them to swim into a woman's ovum. Like the female pill, it;s taken once a day. The man's sperm returns to normal thirty days after stopping the gendarussa pills. A few men have experienced a little weight gain, but nothing compared to the siege of side effects that women report when taking hormonal contraception. In other words, it sounds pretty perfect.

But it's worth noting that the largest sample size for trials was only 350 people. While results have been incredibly encouraging, the Indonesian health authorities understandably want the pills to have been tested on many more men before they hit shelves.

Anyone excited about gendarussa contraceptives coming over to the UK may have to wait. UK health authorities may insist on clinical trials being repeated again, which delays the pill's availability by a number of years.

Still, looks like civilisation is edging ever closer to "the male pill" and a reduction in unwanted pregnancy. Sounds good to us.