Over 5,000 males aged between 10 and 49 have been circumcised in the April Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) in Eastern Province.
Provincial Medical Officer Abel Kabalo told ZANIS in an interview today that 5,242 males were circumcised in the April VMMC campaign saying this was against a target of 5000.
Dr Kabalo stated the programme targets another 5000 in the August VMMC campaign and will specifically target those that are HIV negative.
He stated that VMMC is on-going for males who are HIV positive as they can access the service in various health facilities at any time.
He however expressed concern that reduced support from cooperating partners such as Society for Family Health (SFH) may affect the August VMMC campaign.
The Provincial Medical officer expressed worry that the VMMC August campaign may not reach the intended target of 5000 males in various parts of the province due to inadequate support.
He however stated that health workers will use established systems and available resources to carry out the campaign in all the nine districts of the province.
Dr. Kabalo disclosed that all the holidays on the school calendar have been reserved for the exercise.
From a USAID report:
“in 8 of 18 countries with data, HIV prevalence is lower among circumcised men, while in the remaining 10 countries it is higher.”
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. Promoting genital surgery seems likely to cost African lives rather than save them.
Young males get traumatized from circumcision……
Be very careful with the double standards played by these so called western ngos bet on portraying some kind of a moral code?? Where do the foreskin go, who has custody of it… Are they trying to create and control the African gene pool from these so called circumsions??
Freeing Africa of aids, my foot…! Charity begins at charity. Why are they not forcing their males here in the western world to be circumcised… What is the difference between genital mutilation and the chopping off part of a living organism(dck).
Are we still going to keep dancing to the notions ATI WHAT EVER A MUZUNGU SAYS IS RIGHT!
Open your eyes my zambia/Africa please!!
No more ngoni bulls. Side effect of circumcision is loss of sensitivity, stock enough viagra.
Please my people from the east.why are you sending thes young handsome men to be abused by lies fabricated by the west.No white man has ever cared for an african,even when he gives you a loaf of bread.there is something he is gaining behind the scene which he aint telling you.ifi fyabufi ifya circumcission.dont kill our young people with such barbaric acts. if its tradition in some places then so be it, but i refuse to take it as a necessity to help reduce HIV/AIDS transmission.Let them circumcise barack obama first, and then chop of the breasts of his girls so that they dont get breast cancer later on remove their cervices to avoid cervical cancer. how about that?
I can bet you, these people are harvesting foreskin and selling it in the west for experiments and foreskin restoration.
What next? Female circumcisions? Why cut a part of the body that functions perfectly well in the first place???
What Zambians need is sex education.
Sex education aims to reduce the risks of potentially negative outcomes from sexual behaviour, such as unwanted or unplanned pregnancies and infection with sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. It also aims to contribute to young people’s positive experience of their sexuality, by enhancing the quality of their relationships and their ability to make informed decisions over their lifetime. Sex education should be more than just puberty and reproductive biology; it should help young people to be safe and enjoy their sexuality.
NOT CUTTING OFF PART OF THEIR GENITALS AND SEND HOME AS IGNORANT AS THEY WERE WITHOUT CIRCUMCISION.
Sex education aims to reduce the risks of potentially negative outcomes from sexual behaviour, such as unwanted or unplanned pregnancies and infection with sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. It also aims to contribute to young people’s positive experience of their sexuality, by enhancing the quality of their relationships and their ability to make informed decisions over their lifetime. Sex education should be more than just puberty and reproductive biology; it should help young people to be safe and enjoy their sexuality.
NOT CUTTING OFF PART OF THEIR GENITALS AND SEND HOME AS IGNORANT AS THEY WERE WITHOUT CIRCUMCISION.
What next? Female circumcisions?
Why, have they converted to Islam? Because circumcision certainly does not protect guys against infection with HIV. Which by the way is a massively exaggerated ‘epidemic’.
“VMMC is on-going for males who are HIV positive”
Why? It is too late to protect them, and it offers no protection to women. On the contrary, it increases the risk to women, who are already at much greater risk. And these HIV+ men can – and will – say “See? I’m safe, I’m circumcised, no condoms for us!” This is a recipe for disaster.
In fact the whole genital cutting campaign is doomed to fail. In 10 out of 18 countries for which USAID has figures, more of the genitally reduced men have HIV than the whole men. Cutting men increases risk to women, already at much greater risk. The money would be better spent on providing and promoting condoms, which strongly protect both partners.
Circumcision doesn’t reduce HIV transmission by any significant amount, the statistics should be clear by now.
But why would you try to persuade people who are already HiV positive to get circumcised? It would already be too late to protect them from anything, and male circumcision actually increases the chance of transmitting STDs to females, even the pro-circumcision organizations admit that. It just makes no sense to me.
Of course since circumcision decreases sexual pleasure less than a condom and protects a lot less (if at all), circumcision is a terrible idea in the first place. I’m glad to see so many people speaking out about it, despite how much the circumcision-selling organizations try to coerce people.
There is no medical reason for routine circumcision of boys or men.
The primary zones of male erotogenous sensitivity are the frenulum and the ridged band. These zones are orgasmic triggers. Most people are surprised to learn that the glans penis is one of the least sensitive parts of the entire body. We therefore see: so-called voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) in fact is genital mutilation.
There is no evidence that lack of circumcision is a risk factor for HIV infection. Quite the contrary, male circumcision may increase male-to-female transmission of HIV.
CONDOMS protect against HIV, circumcision does NOT.