As the discredited campaign
to circumcise men in Swaziland to prevent HIV infection continues to fail, two
government ministries are now targeting schoolboys.
A Back to School 2017
campaign has been launched in by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of
Education in partnership. It aims to help get 80 percent of Swazi males
circumcised by 2022. Schoolboys will be ‘sensitised’ to the supposed-need to
have their foreskins cut off to prevent HIV infection.
The target that 80 percent
of Swazi males between ages 15 and 49 should be circumcised was made in 2010
when the Accelerated Saturation Initiative (ASI) was introduced into the
kingdom with the aim of reaching the goal within a year.
The programme, a partnership between the Swazi Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and the US-based Futures Group, was then extended to March 2012 when initial efforts failed to achieve the targeted results and only about 20 percent - or 32,000 - people were circumcised through the programme. The figure for the number of males in the targeted age range is not easily available but there are estimated to be 384,171 males aged between 15 and 65 in Swaziland.
The programme, a partnership between the Swazi Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and the US-based Futures Group, was then extended to March 2012 when initial efforts failed to achieve the targeted results and only about 20 percent - or 32,000 - people were circumcised through the programme. The figure for the number of males in the targeted age range is not easily available but there are estimated to be 384,171 males aged between 15 and 65 in Swaziland.
US$15.5 million was spent on the programme, or
US$484 per circumcised male.
In 2015, the deadline to reach the target was extended to 2018. Now,
that deadline has been extended further to 2022. The Swazi Ministry of Health
reported 96,487 males had been circumcised since 2009.
The
male medical circumcision programme which has been introduced in a number of
countries in Africa, but not in developed countries such as the United States
or in Europe, is based on a claim that removing the foreskin helps to prevent
the spread of HIV. However, evidence does not support this.
A report called Levels
and spread of HIV seroprevalence and associated factors: evidence from national
household surveys published
by USAID, for example, which studied 22 developing countries, primarily in sub-Saharan
Africa, found, ‘There appears no clear pattern of association between male circumcision
and HIV prevalence - in
8 of 18 countries with data, HIV prevalence is lower among circumcised men,
while in the remaining 10 countries it is
higher.
In Swaziland, even before
the ASI was started in 2010, the Government of Swaziland knew circumcision had
no effect on the rate of HIV in the kingdom. The Swaziland Demographic and
Health Survey (SDHS)
of 2007 reported the infection rate for circumcised males was 22 percent while for
those uncircumcised it was 20 percent, which suggested that circumcision did
not prevent HIV spreading.
The Swaziland Government has signed up for circumcision in a big way since 2010, even
announcing that newly born babies, who have no say in the matter, were expected to be cut.
People in Swaziland are
being misled into believing that circumcision can help, when the international
medical community continues to debate whether there is any evidence that it
can. An internationally-based organisation called Doctors Opposing Circumcision
(DOC) published a lengthy report in which it urged that ‘Both the public
and the medical community must guard against being overwhelmed by the
hyperbolic promotion of male circumcision.’
DOC reported that there is no clear evidence as to the effects of circumcision.
DOC reported that there is no clear evidence as to the effects of circumcision.
See also
HAS SWAZI KING BEEN
CIRCUMCISED?
CIRCUMCISION AND HIV PREVENTION
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2010/11/circumcision-and-hiv-prevention.html
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