S. Africa: 'Male circumcision: why the delay?'

Submitted by anthony on Thu, 2009-12-03 17:37

Article here. Excerpt:

'South Africa's National AIDS Council (SANAC) raised the possibility of providing male circumcision services in 2007, but there was a lack of political support, according to Prof Helen Rees, head of SANAC's HIV Research Prevention Committee and executive director of the Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg.

This time, the women's sector wondered how male circumcision would benefit them, and traditional leaders were worried that medical circumcision would conflict with the traditional circumcision that is part of young men's initiation rites for several ethnic groups in South Africa.
...
Prof Rebecca Upton, of the University of Botswana, told "a cautionary tale" based on research she conducted during a national campaign to promote male circumcision for HIV prevention. Many young men she interviewed said being circumcised was a free pass to having unprotected sex, while some young women believed that if their partner was circumcised he was likely to be HIV-negative.

"We have heard that if you get circumcised you will be safe, then you are protected - taking the blanket off is important if you want to be able to have sex. Most girls who want a baby, they also want you to be circumcised now," a 19-year-old male university student told her.

"I'm not arguing with science," Upton said. "But we need to keep listening to very important underlying cultural and social factors as we move forward with these male circumcision campaigns."'

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Comments

.. and this is better?

So if the boys get circumcised the girls will no longer insist on condom use. That's what I am seeing.

But hey, wasn't one of the arguments in favor of routinized/compulsory circumcision of boys in sub-Saharan Africa that since they often FORCE sex on the girls (ie, rape them), that by circumcising the boys they will be less likely to infect the girls? So sub-Saharan African boys are expected to be rapists? Lovely. No racial prejudice at work there.

But back to it, the article says some girls won't have sex with boys because they wants to get pregnant (well, just great). So they gets circumcised so they doesn't have to wear a condom at the insistence of the girl, all so she can get pregnant (or so she hopes). This adds to the problem of yet more people being born into an already poor and over-populated part of the world, and guess what, unprotected sex with a circumcised man, if he has HIV, is a lot more dangerous that protected sex with an uncircumcised one - and what of the boys? If the girl has HIV, the boy is now exposed to it, since she is likely to have it as much as he is -- now that she is having sex with boys not using condoms because -- they are circumcised. What a wonderful loop of ridiculousness at work, leading of course to more babies in an already-over-babied part of the world and inexorably an INCREASE in HIV infections rather than a decrease. Count on it.

On top of all this, no "scientific study" yet released from that part of the world has convincing evidence that male MGM will reduce HIV spread.

Infants do not come with tags attached to their genitalia saying "remove after delivery". I wonder why so many people thus think it;s fine to do what is so routinely done to them?

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Submitted by mcc99 on Thu, 2009-12-03 18:35

Circumcision is a dangerous distraction in the fight against AIDS. There are six African countries where men are more likely to be HIV+ if they've been circumcised: Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, and Swaziland. Eg in Malawi, the HIV rate is 13.2% among circumcised men, but only 9.5% among intact men. In Rwanda, the HIV rate is 3.5% among circumcised men, but only 2.1% among intact men. If circumcision really worked against AIDS, this just wouldn't happen. We now have people calling circumcision a "vaccine" or "invisible condom", and viewing circumcision as an alternative to condoms.

The one randomized controlled trial into male-to-female transmission showed a 54% higher rate in the group where the men had been circumcised btw.

ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful, Condoms) is the way forward. Promoting genital surgery will cost African lives, not save them.

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Submitted by ml66uk on Sun, 2009-12-06 13:49