Circumcision services expand

“Ten districts will be opened next week while 11 others are expected to start in July this year all in rural areas. We are also planning to open two more MC centres in Harare and Chitungwiza,” said National Male Circumcision Coordinator, Sinokutemba Xaba.

He said only 28 districts had been offering MC services occasionally since 2009. The Ministry of Health has 63 health districts and over 1, 500 health facilities countrywide.

Xaba said 24,626 men had been circumcised since January. “Our 2013 target is to circumcise 150,000 men and so far more than half of last year’s total number of 40,775 have been circumcised. In 2011 36,742 men were circumcised,” he said.

Xaba said government was still awaiting the World Health Organisation’s approval of the recently finished study of the Prepex device. “Once approved Prepex will give people options to getting circumcised and we expect it to be available beginning next year,” he said.

“In terms of cost effectiveness, Prepex and surgical circumcision are almost the same but the former has a lot of advantages as nurses can also do it unlike in surgical where a doctor is required to do it with three nurses,” he added.

Prepex is a simple non-surgical plastic device designed to kill off the male foreskin painlessly while achieving circumcision over a period of seven days. Health experts say it is safe, simple and faster to implement to increase voluntary medical male circumcision since there is no loss of blood, sutures and injected anaesthesia.

Xaba revealed a second clinical validation for safety and efficacy study of Prepex among young men would start soon since the first one involved adults of 30 years and above.

“A further study on adolescent of ages 13 to 17 years will be conducted since our country’s MC policy targets those that are 13 years old and above,” he said.

Xaba said the target of circumcising 1, 2 million men by 2015 has been shifted to 2016 because of limited access to services in Zimbabwe since the inception of the programme in 2009.

Male circumcision is scientifically proven to lessen chance of contracting HIV by 60 percent, improves cleanliness and prevents cervical cancer in women.

Rwanda is the African country with lowest male circumcision rate and WHO in 2011 approved the eastern country to use Prepex to scale up voluntary medical male circumcision.