Male Circumcision Programme Facing Resistance

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Malawi Government launched a year ago what it called “voluntary male circumcision programme” with an aim of circumcising 2.1 million males by 2016. The goal of the programme is to reduce HIV infections among sexually active males.

So far, the Malawian Ministry of Health announced that only 15,000 males have come forward and went through the knife. This number represents only 0.7% of the targeted population, which indicates that something must be wrong somewhere in the process as the programme now nears one year mark.

The ministry’s spokesperson, Henry Chimbali, points to a number of factors that contributed to the slow pace of the programme. He blames 'house-keeping' issues such as policy, scale up plan of the campaign, communication plan and human resources as the main contributing factors to the slow pace.'