Will Circumsion Curb the AIDS Epidemic?

The World Health Organization announced Wednesday, that scientific evidence has proof that a circumcision can help prevent the spread of AIDS by up to 60 percent. This evidence has proven to be more effective than even so vaccinations. The World Health Organizations hopes to encourage nations with soaring AIDS epidemics to offer free or subsidized circumcisions to those areas with the highest AIDS populations.

Backed by the United Nations AIDS agency, it is thought that a campaign for circumcisions could prevent 5.7 million cases of AIDS in Africa in the next 20 years said the WHO in a statement released in Geneva.

"The recommendations represent a significant step forward in HIV prevention. Scaling up male circumcision in such countries will result in immediate benefit to individuals. However, it will be a number of years before we can expect to see an impact on the epidemic from such investment," said in a statement by Kevin M. De Cock, director of WHO's HIV-AIDS department.

The announcement Wednesday called for circumcisions to be part of a prevention program along with HIV testing, counseling and providing condoms. It also encourage the procedure to be performed on adult males who are at high risk of contracting the virus before infants.

It has been discussed on how to increase the circumcisions in the developing nation in rural areas where the medical facilities are minimal. A Johannesburg AIDS physician and president of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, Francois Venter commented, "Any prevention program that does not have circumcision as one of its key components is inadequate,"

African tribes use to perform circumcisions as a ritual to signify the coming of age from a boy to a man. These rituals have been forgone in some areas due to modernization. Although in areas in West Africa where they are still regularly performed there is also a lower rate of HIV infections.

Being able to put a lid on the growing rate of HIV in countries like African will greatly help reduce the growing rate of infections all over the world. Many countries after the announcement have all ready called for provisions to increase circumcision in their countries to try and stop the growing rate of infections.
(www.washingtonpost.com)