Thursday, March 28, 2024

Medical experts now allowed to circumcise in traditional initiation camps

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File:Boys waiting to be circumcised
File:Boys waiting to be circumcised

Medically trained experts are now allowed to carry out surgical circumcision in traditional initiation circumcision camps.

Traditional Circumcision ceremonies such as Mukanda Initiation ceremony, which is a passage of ritual rites have been practiced by ethnic groups in North-Western Part of Zambia among the luvale,Lunda,and Kaonde speaking people.

For a few months during winter Season,young adolescents from these ethnic groups are taken to the camps set up in the bush near the community where they are taught traits and dances peculiar to their tradition,cultural values and skills expected of a man from their ethnic groups,roles and duties of a good husband and later on the teenagers are circumcised using a special knife as a symbol of initiation into adulthood.

In June 2007,Government adopted Male Circumcision as a preventive tool in response to HIV/AIDS after a study that was done in North-Western Province concluded that the prevalance rate of HIV/AIDS was lower among cirumcised men compared to uncircumsied men.From the study it was discovered that circumcision can reduce chances of contracting HIV by up to 60 per cent.

“However we do not practice circumcision ceremonies for purposes of HIV Prevention but we do it for cultural reasons and part of it is to impart posterity of ritual rites and values among our boys as they grow into adults.It is imperative for every Luvale to have the child circumcised and for us it is part of cleanliness”,said one ‘Pennis Doctor'(Circumsiser) commonly known as Chikenzi in the community of Philimon Kanyanga.

He said to many people in the Luvale ethnic communities the study results that revealed the reduction of HIV/AIDS among circumsised men came as news as many did not know about that.

Moreover many teenagers especially in rural communities prefer to undergo traditional circumcision for purposes of sexual prowness and attraction to girls, as well as dominance over uncircumcised teenagers who are seen to be weaklings.

In Livingstone District,Southern Part of Zambia most Circumcision camps are conducted in Linda Community which has a fair population of Luvale families.

“I spent 3 months in the camp when I was 14 and then what I knew was that by being circumcised I am immune to get any Sexually Transmitted Disease including HIV itself”,confesses Edward Samukonga now 25 years old.

“We love guys who have gone to Mukanda initiation camps because they are good in bed..where a man who is uncircumcised can just have you for short time,a circumcised guy can make more rounds because they have huge sexual apetite”,says Precious,one of the adolescent girls in the community expressing the general perception of traditionally circumcised young adults in the community.

However 61 year old Brenda Nuyambango,recalled the bad experience she had with traditional circumcision in 1999,”My son died in the camp after bleeding heavily when his foreskin was cut.Circumcisers told us he had an STI before he was circumcised and had sores on the head of his manhood. Upto now we do not know the truth but if he had sores why did they go ahead and cut him.”

In 2008,the term Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision(VMMC) was widely used to distinguish clinically done circumcision carried out by medically trained experts from traditionally conducted circumcision done in initiation camps after several studies and clinical trials.One of the studies conducted in Kenya concluded that the rate of complications and adverse effects are 25 per cent higher in traditional circumcision than in clinical circumcision.

Donors such as PEPFAR,Melinda and Gates Foundation as well as Global fund have been providing financial and technical support to priority countries including Zambia to scale up VMMC National Operation plans and the integration of Medical Circumcision and Traditional Circumcision was one of the recommendations.

It is anticipated that if communities transform from traditional circumcision to Medical Circumcision or integrate VMMC into Traditional camps the impact,the global 2025 vision of achieving 80 per cent coverage of VMMC response to HIV/AIDS prevention will be achieved.

Currently Zambia’s National Operation plan is in effect and bearing fruits.A major milestone achievement has been the initiative to integrate medically trained experts to carry out operations in traditional Camps.

“We have experts who once in a while will visit the traditional camps and conduct clinical circumcision during the tradition initiation training.This never used to happen, it was considered taboo for anyone to enter the camp because it is considered a sacred site but then safety concerns came in and now we have reached the consensus where at a stage of circumcision our experts are allowed to conduct VMMC services”,says Kelvin Biemba,Linda Clinic VMMC cordinator.

“Advantages of conducting VMMC in traditional camps are many firstly,the initiates are counselled,tested,taught about the importance of VMMC in response to HIV/AIDS,they are also taught about Gender based Violence(GBV)”,he says.

Many Traditional Circumcisers have realised the benefits and safety of cutting the foreskin clinically as opposed to the use of a knife.
“The only condition is we only allow male medical experts from our ethnic group to conduct VMMC on our initiates for cultural reasons and we do so because we do not want to expose our traditional practice so much”,says Mr Kanyanga,a traditional circumciser.

10 COMMENTS

  1. When will Zambia and Africa as a whole learn? HIV is preventable and requires an informed personal decision in most circumstances. Use circumcision as a cultural value and NOT as a preventable measure to sucumb HIV. Do not be dubbed by hungery researchers who think they can do whatever they feel as right by exposing your ignorance. Own up.

  2. THIS WAS LONG OVERDUE HEALTH WISE.CIRCUMCISION IS RISKY.MY SUGGESTION IS THAT IT BE DONE @ 8 DAYS OLD IN OUR HOSPITALS CLINICS AS GOD CONSTITUTED IT. ELSE IN THESE CIRCUMCISION CAMPS,SATANIC RITUALS ARE ALSO DONE IN THE NAME OF TRADITION.

    • kwena les uyu is surprising. he creates man and it says in the bible that he was happy with his creation and behold it was very good. a few years down the line ati awe iyo. muleputulako inkanda. very strange indeed. I respect all traditional values of africans but dont include ifya kwa lesa of foreign people in our traditions.
      The old testament God is a tyrannt and savage. he is obsessed with blood. i wonder why? ena fyonse mulopa. sacrifice, i need a sweet smell of barbeque. rape na chilemba nshilefwaya. apatilamo na cain who was a farmer. a new covenant with israel ati ine ndefwaya umulopa uuswe from circumcision.hmmm ninshi yashani abena jehovah??

  3. Man was created in the image of God. If God did not see value in the foreskin why did he put it. Are you accusing the almighty for a defective design?

  4. Circumcision is the biggest medical fraud in history. Many professionals have criticized the studies claiming that circumcision reduces HIV transmission. The investigators did not seek to determine the source of the HIV infections during their studies. They assumed all infections were heterosexually transmitted.

    Many HIV infections in Africa are transmitted by contaminated injections and surgical procedures. The absolute rate of HIV transmission reduction is only 1.3%, not the claimed 60%. Even if the claim were true, based on the studies, about 60 men had to be circumcised to prevent one HIV infection.

    Authorities that cite the studies have other agendas including political and financial. All other national and international organizations that have positions on circumcision oppose…

  5. Male circumcision is a dangerous distraction in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

    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.”
    http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pdf/CR22/CR22.pdf
    (this will include men who were circumcised tribally rather than medically, but they and their partners may also believe themselves to be protected, and the whole rationale for the RCT’s into female-to-male transmission was a purported correlation between high rates of male circumcision and low rates of HIV)

    It seems highly unrealistic to expect that there will be no risk compensation. The South African National…

  6. Male circumcision is a dangerous distraction in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

    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.”
    (this will include men who were circumcised tribally rather than medically, but they and their partners may also believe themselves to be protected, and the whole rationale for the RCT’s into female-to-male transmission was a purported correlation between high rates of male circumcision and low rates of HIV)

    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…

  7. Indeed if God the creater of all living things wanted us men to be without the fore-skin, he could have made us that way. Who are these men then asking us to fore-go our beautiful skin caps? I have kept mine, thanks.

  8. In North Western Province the Kaondes do not go through Mukanda initition its only these days but its the Chokwe, Luvale, Lunda, Luchazi and Kaminunga’s etc who go through that. This ritual has been done by trained medical personal in Mwinilunga, Kabompo, Zambezi, Lukulu, Chavuma, Mufumbwe. Its not new. In Congo DR. Katanga Province its done right ta the hospital once a baby boy a few days after its born. This thing sounds new to urban Zambian communities. But some think when one is done then it becomes passport to round up women. There is no total guarantee against contracting HIV/AIDS. One can imagine the high levels of socialization including prostitution in Congo DR yet the rate of people living with AIDS/HIV is very low compared to Zambia and Zimbabwe.

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