Community Development Minister Emerine Kabanshi says government is keen to see many men undergo circumcision to lessen the increasing rate of HIV/AIDS.
Speaking in Lusaka during a Media breakfast, Ms. Kabanshi through her deputy Dorothy Kazunga said the country will be destined for a good healthy citizenry.
And Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision National Coordinator Dr. Albert Kaonga revealed that 17, 000 people are targeted to be circumcised in August 2014.
Dr. Kaonga also called for the private sector to join and support the noble cause.
He aded that over 800, 000 infants have undergone male circuncision since 2007
IS your husband CIRCUMCISED? How is his performance as compared to when he was uncircumcised? when one is above 40 the erectile strength is affected, and those with short pennis it becomes very funny to look at after cutting because it shrinks.
There no other things to do in that ministry of Community than developing sex organs?
Start with Kambwili
Nonsense. Circumcision make no different to function or size.
All men please avoid circumcision. Just practice good hygiene to prevent urinary tract infections or use a condom to prevent AIDS. The potential benefits of circumcision are not strong enough that you must face the knife. Cleaning, if regular, is more than sufficient to get the apparatus going. If circumcision is all about removing people’s folds of protective skin to prevent the possible accumulation of dirt in them, why then not circumcising girls and women who have bigger folds? In small boys, the foreskin is attached just like the nail is attached to the finger. No need to clean or circumcise our little ones.
Emmanuel Chende: Whilst hygiene and cleanliness are to be encouraged, they are not enough to fight HIV. In countries where the virus is rife it would be prudent to take every practical precaution against it, and that includes medical circumcision.
From a USAID report:
“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.”
It seems highly unrealistic to expect that there will be no risk compensation. The South African National Communication Survey on HIV/AIDS, 2009 found that 15% of adults across age groups “believe that circumcised men do not need to use condoms”.
It is unclear if circumcised men are more likely to infect women. The only ever randomized controlled trial into male-to-female transmission showed a 54% higher rate in the group where the men had been circumcised.
ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful, and especially Condoms) is the way forward.
Lyndon: Why do you keep quote-mining USAID report 22? Have you even read it, and noted the caveats about the sample sizes? Are you aware of the simple confounding factor that explains the data? You have been peddling this misleading claim for years now, even though others have taken you to task over it. As for risk compensation, there are several studies that show that, provided men are given proper counselling, it does not happen. Yet another such study has just been published in AIDS and Behaviour. Read it. As you know (others have told you) the male to female study you refer to didn’t achieve statistical significance. Even so, look at the data in table 3 and the text below, and reason is obvious – resuming sex b4 healing is complete. Now stop misleading people with this claim.
It’s hardly “quote-mining” when in 10 out of 18 African countries, circumcised men have higher rates of HIV than intact men. If male circumcision really had a 60% reductive effect, that just wouldn’t happen. Add Puerto Rico and Malaysia to the list btw.
The figures in the Wawer study were indeed too small to show statistical significance, but there will be no larger scale study to find out if circumcising men increases the risk to women. Somehow that’s considered unethical, yet it’s considered ethical to promote male circumcision whilst not knowing if the risk to women is increased (by 54%?, 108%?, 0%? – who knows?)
That study was stopped “for futility” before the figures could reach statistical significance. Why? There is no sensible ethical reason.
That quote I “mined” is reported as a “key finding” btw.
“[the] reason is obvious – resuming sex b4 healing is complete”. Even if that were true, and I think you’d have to concede it’s just wishful thinking based on the numbers, how can you guarantee that men who’ve been circumcised won’t resume sex early?
I think it’s unrealistic to expect that men who have been circumcised and told it lowers their risk of being infected with HIV, are then going to use condoms just as often. If condom use drops by even a small amount, then there will almost certainly be a rise in new infections, amongst both men and women.
At the AIDS 2012 Conference, Washington DC in 2012, Angelo Kaggwa from Uganda, said “Now I have no worries if I have an opportunity and I have forgotten to bring…
Lyndon: “If male circumcision really had a 60% reductive effect, that just wouldn’t happen.” FALSE. Confounding factors affect epidemiological data. In the case of USAID #22 there is one in particular which explains most, if not all, the anomalous countries. If you have done your homework you’d know it. It is well known & has been in the literature since 2007. Tell us it. Let’s see if have done your homework.
Re Puerto Rico & Malaysia, refs please. If the Puerto Rico one is that by Rodriguez-Diaz then why are you still using a discredited study?
Lyndon: “there will be no larger scale study to find out if circumcising men increases the risk to women”. FALSE. It is underway and preliminary findings are that circumcising men gives around 20% protection to women. This was announced at the recent AIDS conference. You know, the conference that some of the victims of MH17 were on their way to, which led to some of you sick intactivists gloating over their deaths. See medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/IAC/46955 for details of the study and thecaseagainstintactivism.wordpress.com/ for some of the revolting comments by sickos in your ranks. Doesn’t it disturb you that intactivism attacks so many nutters and zealots? Frankly, you people disgust me.
Typo correction. “intactivism attacks so many nutters and zealots? ” should read “intactivism ATTRACTS so many nutters and zealots?” And indeed it does. Anti-vaxers, HIV/AIDS deniers, people who cyber-attack a respected cancer research institute, abuse and vilify their opponents on-line, try to make circ’d males miserable by lying to them about sensation and function, and undermine public health initiatives in the face of a devastating epidemic. Disgusting.
I’ll have to wait till later to reply to some of your other posts, but I was talking about a larger scale RCT into male-to-female transmission, which simply won’t happen. That was why it made no sense whatsoever to abort the Wawer study (the men were already circumcised). I can’t think of any reason other than that they didn’t like the way the results were heading.
I hadn’t seen any intactivists gloating about the MH17 disaster, and will rip into them big-time when I have time to find the twitter posts. I’ve been to AIDS conferences in Vienna and Rome, and considered going to Melbourne, which means I could have been on that flight myself.
I regularly take on anti-vaxers and HIV/AIDS deniers.
Why were all the RCT’s into female-to-male transmission in countries where circumcised men had lower rates of HIV? Why were so many people lost to follow up? Why has the raw data never been released?
What about the 1993 study that found that “partner circumcision” was “strongly associated with HIV-1 infection [in women] even when simultaneously controlling for other covariates.”
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There’s a striking correlation between female circumcision and low HIV rates, but we’d never consider an RCT into any form of female genital surgery. An RCT into male circumcision seems equally bizarre.
Consider this, and let me know how it can make any sense:
Rwanda has one doctor for every 50,000 people, and one nurse for every 3,900 people.
The HIV rate in circumcised Rwandan men is 3.5%, but 2.1% in intact men.
Rwanda started a mass male circumcision programme in 2012.
It’s not like we’ve actually tried the things that do work. In Malawi for instance, only 72% know that condoms protect against HIV/AIDS, and only 86% know that limiting sexual partners protects against HIV/AIDS. There are people who haven’t even heard of condoms. It just seems really misguided to be hailing male circumcision as the way forward.
Meanwhile, AIDS killed an estimated 1.6 million people worldwide in 2012, but an estimated 2.2 million children under five died from pneumonia, diarrheal diseases…
Apparently Hollie Redinger who posted the original tweet about the MH17 disaster is already widely despised amongst intactivists, and a motion to repudiate her comments was passed at the recent intactivist symposium.
“intactivism ATTRACTS so many nutters and zealots”
Many of the pro-circers could also be described that way. Conversely, several national medical organizations are against male circumcision of children.
Mark Lyndon: I assumed that by raw data you meant what is in the papers, in which case I have seen it. If you think there is additional data lurking somewhere then please clarify. As for Hollinger she is not alone. Her sick post attracted over 30 likes and several supportive posts. I wish I could say she was fringe amongst intactivists, but having seen the most appalling abuse routinely meted out by intactivists on-line I am not so sure. Glad you disapprove though. What do you think of intactivists cyber-attacking the Catalan Institute of Oncology? Utterly immoral I’d say. I have challenged a few “respectable” intactivists about this (eg Brian Earp) and got silence. Your side attracts nutters and zealots, and the “respectable” ones don’t like to acknowledge it.
Mark Lyndon: You have ignored my points about USAID 22 and brought up new, unrelated, ones. In short, you’ve changed the subject. I have seen this before when debating creationists. When losing they change the subject. Returning to USAID 22, now I have pointed out the caveats about small sample sizes, which make a nonsense of the numbers you cite, and which you ignore, do you still find the data compelling? Also, tell us about the simple confounding factor you have been ignoring and which accounts for some (maybe all) of the remainder. You know, the simple observation that has been in the literature since at least 2007. That one. (It may also shed light on the Rwandan data you cite).
Jul 25 • The following resolution was adopted unanimously by Genital Autonomy 2014, the 13th International Symposium on Genital Autonomy and Children’s Rights.The Genital Autonomy movement (intactivism) condemns the shooting down of MH17 and deplores without reservation the deaths of all on board. Any other sentiment concerning this international tragedy is the opinion of the person making it, alone.Endorsed by spokespeople for:Genital AutonomyIntact AmericaNOCIRCNOHARMMDoctors Opposing CircumcisionAttorneys for the Rights of the ChildNurses for the Rights of the ChildNORM-UKThe Australasian Institute for Genital AutomonyCanadian Foreskin Awareness Project Intact Denmark – Forening mod børneomskæringBloodstained Men & Their FriendsMen Do Complain
I don’t have much time right now, but I’ll find that post and condemn it myself. I wasn’t aware of a cyber-attack on the Catalan Institute of Oncology, but that sounds pretty stupid too. There are several anti-circ people who we could do without, but there are also many pro-circers who I suspect you’d wish to disassociate yourself from, and I’ve seen appalling abuse from them too.
I’m not sure what “simple confounding factor” you’re referring to, but there’s clearly something else going on with male circumcision and HIV, or there wouldn’t be so many countries where the available data shows HIV linked to circ. You don’t seem to want to address the issue of risk compensation, or the fact that there hasn’t been an RCT into male-to-female transmission which supported the…
Mark L: You still ignore my points re the small sample sizes in USAID 22. You still find them compelling? The cyber-attack on the Cat Inst Onc was after they published their 2002 study linking 4skins to HPV in men & cervical cancer in their female partners. I saw it mentioned by lead author Castellsague so I emailed him. He said he’d got a message on his screen saying he was being attacked for his “pro-circ” views then his hard drive was wiped. This despite him not recommending circ, but merely reporting findings intactivists didn’t like. For the record I am much more anti-intactivist than pro-circ. If pushed I’d go with the AAP but am totally opposed to circ in anything other than a medical setting, ie. pain control, hygiene, good cosmetic outcome & done by a medically…
Mark L: (cont). medically trained person. Hope this clarifies things. The confounding factor you ignore is how the circ is done. Circ varies widely over Africa. From infants to children to teenagers to adults. By medics, shamans, traditional circumcisers. With or without hygiene, pain control or concern for good cosmetic outcome (scarring). Total or partial. In some countries, eg. Lesotho, Cameroon, Tanzania, it is an initiation ceremony on young men some of whom are already sexually active & therefore infected. It is by a shaman with a razor blade and no hygiene. If one chap in the line-up has HIV the implications for those that follow are obvious. Little wonder circ correlates with HIV in those countries – they’re getting it through initiation circs!
ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful, and especially Condoms) is the way forward. Promoting genital surgery seems likely to cost African lives rather than save them.
Europeans don’t circumcise, South Americans don’t circumcise, Australians and New Zealanders used to circumcise but stopped, and less than half of North Americans circumcise. Why should Africans circumcise?
Recent news from Botswana:
“There is an upsurge of cases of people who got infected with HIV following circumcision.”
and from Zimbabwe:
“SOME circumcised men are contracting HIV and Aids after ditching the use of condoms, under a misguided belief that male circumcision (MC) would prevent them from getting infected”
and from Kenya:
“Push for male circumcision in Nyanza fails to reduce infections”
Circumcision is no solution at all. It is just a man-made thinking. Circumcision is a tradition that was only introduced by funny thinking. It came as a punishment. Some religions adopted it because of powerful circumcised men at the time. It is the same as female genital mutilation, what for but just male dominance over women! Look at pearcing and stretching of ear lobes, tattoos, stretching of lips in east Africa, beauty surgeries, etc are all creation of man. AIDS OR NO AIDS people have lived long lives without circumcision. There is no correlation between AIDS and chopping of man’s manhood foreskin. just like homosexual is being driven by the powerful, circumcision is being driven by the powerful too. its about influence by the powerful, like some religions. Beliefs can be unreal!
Yeah..gay people just want the right to be gay. Stop acting like supporting marriage for everyone is the same thing as making money off the cut genitals of children.
hiv prevance rate in congo dr is less than 1%.zambia today stands at 19%.almost all men in congo are circumcised.lets go for mc. stop aguing
You’ve made me to chuckle, my nigga. You are one of the few peoplesa supporting circumcision, lol!
Almost no men in Europe are circumcised, yet the rate of HIV is about 0.2% (roughly a third of the rate in the USA, where most men are circumcised).
There are also lots of African countries where the circumcised men have higher rates of HIV than the intact men.
From a USAID report:
“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.”
Mark Lyndon: Again you quote-mine USAID report 22. For goodness’ sake LOOK AT THE RAW DATA! Three of those countries have sample sizes so small one cannot possibly tell if there is a relationship. Some other countries in both groups have sample sizes small enough to be influenced by a few households. The authors even draw attention to the small sample sizes on p. 12 (near top) & p. 110 (footnote). This makes a nonsense of the figures you cite. Why don’t you tell us the reason some African countries have higher HIV rates in circ’d men? You know, the simple reason that his been in the literature since 2007. Some European countries have higher HIV rates than USA, where it has a head start, yet remains confined to high risk groups. As usual you don’t tell the whole story.
It’s a “key finding”, not “quote-mining”. I have looked at the raw data, and it still looks compelling, and I believe that the promotion of male circumcision in Africa will cost lives, not save them. Have you looked at the raw data of the four RCT’s (including the Wawer study) ?
Lyndon: You quote out of context, which includes qualifiers you ignore: p.12 “some of the estimates presented in this report are based on small numbers of cases in survey samples, and should be interpreted with caution” & p.110 “Note: HIV prevalence estimates for ‘not circumcised’ men for Guinea and Niger are based on small numbers of cases”. See the raw data. Senegal’s is also too small. Guinea & Niger only had 18 & 14 men in the uncirc’d groups. Senegal 56. With HIV rates <1% there may not be a HIV+ person in such small samples, so why do you regard it as “compelling”? The authors don’t – they urge caution. Several other countries, in both groups, (e.g. Haiti) have sample sizes small enough to be influenced by just a few households. And still you think the data is…
Lyndon: (cont.) …still you think the data is compelling.
Yes, I have looked at the data in the RCTs. That’s why I quickly spotted where you went wrong with the Wawer male to female study. The answer jumps out from table 3, and is covered in the text below, and again in the discussion on p.235. Some men resumed sex before healing was complete, so infected their partners. It’s really obvious, but you ignore it. This just shows that men need to be properly educated about the need to wait until healing is complete before resuming sex. Of course, had they been circ’d as babies this problem would not have arisen.
so, over 800, 000 infants have undergone male genital mutilation since 2007. Those poor children have had their rights violated. Absolute risk reduction of hiv with vmmc (elected by adults) is only 1.3% female to male. If your government was concerned about the health of its people they would pass out condoms and build free puplic showers. Follow the money trail and it will lead to circumcision. America was circumcised up to 80% after the aids epidemic started in 60’s. It was already a failed experiment here. Circumcised men will still die of aids.
Melody: It is misleading to cite absolute risk reduction. The correct way is relative risk – a 60% reduction in risk of transmission (rising to 76% over time in the S. African trial, that compares with flu vaccine). But of course you want to downplay the numbers to suit your agenda of putting men at risk. The 1.3% was over the 2 years of the trial. Over 20 yrs it would be 13%, more over a lifetime. That means millions of infections averted over the continent of Africa over the next few decades. Condoms have been massively promoted in Africa but still men just won’t use them, or use them every time, or use them properly when they do. They are not enough, something more is needed – ie. circumcision. Most USA men with HIV got it in ways not affected by circ.
!? Absolute risk reduction is more important than relative risk reduction. I’d pay big bucks to halve my risk of a heart attack in the next twenty years for example, but wouldn’t care about totally eliminating my risk of being hit by lightning.
Risk compensation? 15% of South Africans in 2009 thought that “circumcised men do not need to use condoms”.
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“I have problems with circumcised men because they do not want to use condoms. They always argue that because they have been circumcised they did not need to use condoms,” said [sex worker] Memory, who is also HIV-positive.
Memory said even after disclosing her HIV status, they still insisted on sleeping with her without any form of…
less than half Americans circumcise their children currently. This is a big pay cut for the circumcisers where I live. The circumcisers are going to get paid by going to africa. They even hooked your governments up for selling their product. Once they circumcise enough people the people will keep paying them to circumcise. You’re not being kept healthy…as a matter of fact you will likely have an epidemic of men with damaged penis’ and erectile dysfunction. This only makes them more money. Get your viagra early. It will be in high demand once all these circumcised guys get closer to age 50. Also if men think they are immune to hiv, fail to wear condoms, along with increasesd vaginal trauma from not having sex as nature intended, they will be more likely to infect female partners.
Rubbish! Circ has been shown over and over again to be cost effective, highly so in high-HIV countries. You are resorting to conspiracy theories now, a sure sign you have no case. Nor does it affect function, as shown by multiple studies including a meta-analysis last year. You are merely parroting tired old and discredited claims. I am 51, circumcised (at age 30) and still waiting for all the dreadful effects the anti-circ’ers claim I should suffer. Still waiting after 21 years of no problems whatever.
They have a cure for aids. They even have a vaccine for hiv. But they would prefer to make as much money off you as possible. Passing out the cure wouldn’t help them profit off you would it?
Melody: Now you are just plain lying. There is no cure for AIDS, just treatments that keep it suppressed. And no vaccine either. Shame on you.
I do NOT see the need for this act. When my life partner once insisted on having my child undergo the same, I totally refused; citing among other things the right of my boy to make a decision for himself. This was a very handy tie breaker, more so that Circumcision is not reversible.
I believe in NOT fixing what is NOT broken. Those of you who share in the belief of having been created by the powers above (or below) will agree with me that the creator was NOT Stupid to have created man with a foreskin on the penis. He created you and I perfect (and perfect enough) for one to live happily ever after. (May I say, in his own likeness!) He would have removed it, or better still made the foreskin start aging or pealing off without complications – the same way the nails naturally do…
Mule: aside from divine injunctions to the Jews to circumcise, which makes a nonsense of God-based anti-circ arguments (at least the Biblical God), we are the products of evolution. A feature of evolution is that structures sometimes become redundant. With time they wither away as deleterious mutations take their toll, but it takes many generations. An example is the eyes of blind cave animals. Totally useless to their owners, even disadvantageous, but natural selection has not had time to eliminate them yet. Humans are no different and, in principle, could be carrying around evolutionary relics – like a flap of skin useful to naked hominids on the Savannah to protect the glans, but made redundant by clothing, and now may even be disadvantageous.
Circumcised men you are disabled.
openness: hundreds of millions of circumcised men, including many like me done as adults, will disagree very strongly with that statement.
Circumcision to prevent HIV infection is a hoax.
Unnecessary surgery is a crime.
I repeat, circumcision does not prevent HIV infection of HIV negative men by HIV positive women – which is the only effect it could possibly have. Of course it does nothing to prevent an HIV negative woman from being infected by an HIV positive man.
” He aded that over 800, 000 infants have undergone male circuncision since 2007 ”
Can anyone say: Class Action Lawsuit?
Circumcision to prevent HIV infection is a hoax, by people who are circumcision fans, and want to see everyone on the planet circucised. The “60%” prevention number is a scientific fraud.
At g*o*o*g*l*e, type in:
150 MPs to undergo circumcision maravi
Were we fooled maravi
MrK: I look forward to your next post telling us that the earth is flat.
Circumcision alters sex dramatically by cutting away 100 sqr cm of pleasure receptive surface, stripping away protection for the glans, and eliminating the frictionless gliding mode of stimulation afforded by the slack skin. Foreskin feels REALLY good.
Most of the US men who have died of AIDS were circumcised at birth. The US has three times the HIV incidence seen in Europe where circumcision is very rare.
Ron Low: 100 sq cm? That’s a HUGE foreskin, even if both inner & outer surfaces are counted. Was it mine? Pleasurable sensations come from genital corpuscles which are concentrated around the glans, not the foreskin. If gliding is frictionless then how can it stimulate anything? Circ makes no significant difference to sensation, pleasure or function. Contrary claims are malicious myths spread by the anti-circ lobby.
Re US men who died of AIDS, many got it through contaminated blood transfusions, needle sharing or anal sex. Circ makes no difference then. Most new infections in USA are still got through the latter 2 ways. When it is got heterosexually it is disproportionately so in blacks & Hispanics – the groups least likely to be circ’d. Circ is not “very rare” in Europe.
there is zero evidence circumcision lowers HIV risk. African men are being duped. All of those trials were methodologically flawed. A 1st year university student can see that.
Circumcision also removes the most hypersensitive part of the penis, the ridged band (and usually the frenular delta too), which results in zero sexual pleasure and 4-5 times higher risk of erectile dysfunction.
I was circumcised at 14 without my informed consent and it destroyed my sex life for life. A circumcised man is a sexually dysfunctional man, by definition.