In Zimbabwe, medical doctors at referral hospitals currently do male circumcision. Zimbabwe has, to date, managed to circumcise 80,000 males against the targeted 1, 200,000 by the year 2015.
In an interview with The Zimbabwean at a National Aids Council workshop in Chinhoyi, Mashonaland West, AIDS and TB Unit Director, Owen Mugurungi, said the scarce human resource base of health personnel in the country had a negative impact on HIV interventions.
“We are currently exploring ways to empower our nurses to perform male circumcision,” he said. Mugurungi added that while the health ministry had made considerable progress in terms of the ever increasing numbers of males undergoing circumcision, scarce resources continued to be a barrier.
“Our major challenge is the cost associated with male circumcision. However, we have since discovered that we can reach our targeted number if we circumcise new born babies,” added Mugurungi.NAC Research and Documentation Coordinator, Freeman Dube, said the country was still waiting for the finalisation of current projects before they apply for Phase 2 funding for the utilisation of SADC HIV funds.
According to the Global Aids Response Progress report of 2012, financial constraints presented as the most difficult challenge affecting HIV/ AIDS interventions.
“There is limited funding for male circumcision and the roll out of MC in district and community level health facilities has been slow and inadequate,” stated the report, adding that: “There is inadequate capacity at health facilities to conduct counselling and testing and voluntary MC procedures.”
Post published in: Health
When more of the circumcised men in Zimbabwe have HIV than the non-circumcised, why should anyone carry out male circumcision? This figure was confirmed by a second survey carried out after the circumcision campaign began. The same is true in 10 out of 18 countries for which USAID has figures. Circumcision is a “cure” looking for a disease. If men want to get circumcised, let them and let them pay for it, With such shortage in Zimbabwe’s health system, this should NOT be a priority. And babies should be left alone.
Most of the US men who have died of AIDS were circumcised at birth.
A 2009 WHO study by Wawer/Gray showed that the Ugandan men they circumcised infected their female partners with deadly HIV 50% MORE often than the men they left intact did. It is very irresponsible to promote mass circumcision until this finding is confirmed or explained.
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