OVER 25,000 males underwent circumcision in Kagera Region between 2009 to October, this year, a senior official with the International Centre for Aids Prevention (ICAP), Dr Song'oro Biki, has disclosed.
Dr Biki told the 'Daily News' that Kagera Region had also reduced HIV infection rate from 5.7 per cent to 3.7 per cent, largely due to the awareness campaign. He noted that a total of 12,597 males underwent the 'cut' between October, 2010 to September, 2011, while 12,471 others underwent circumcision in Kagera Region from October 2011 to October, this year.
"The response was quite promising as more people were showing up voluntarily for the cut. It is not true that people in Kagera Region hate being circumcised. More people including youths were taking the service. There are a few people who spread unfounded rumours that circumcision was anti-Christianity," he said.
Dr Biki said the service was being provided at the Bukoba Regional Hospital and Rubya Hospital in Muleba District, adding that plans were underway to provide the service at Maruku and Izimbya Wards, in Bukoba Rural District.
He further elaborated that ICAP, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, had extended male circumcision services to over 15 islands in the Lake Victoria Archipelago. The services include Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMCT) and availability of ARVs.
He said the target group was that of adults aged 25 years and above, adding that the response in rural areas was good compared to urban areas. The first HIV/AIDS patient was recorded in Kagera Region in 1983. Since then, the killer disease has been spreading at a fast rate claiming thousands of lives with over 150,000 AIDS orphans.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), circumcision can reduce HIV infections by almost 60 per cent. Meanwhile, the Kagera Regional Commissioner, Fabian Massawe, has urged the residents not to relax and should take precaution to avoid contracting HIV/AIDS by using condoms.
He said the region's economy had negatively been affected by HIV/AIDS and its aftermath, a challenge which should make people work even harder to speed up their development. He cited other challenges facing the region to include killing of albinos and elderly people.
A total of seven albinos were killed between 2008 -2010, raising fears about their lives. Others are environmental degradation, armed robberies, coffee smuggling to a neighbouring country, pregnancies among students and illegal immigrants.
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There is no data that shows HIV, HPV or any STD change or any real benefit to cutting off parts of a baby boys penis in the US, EU JP....In Africa the same % of cut men and natural penis men have HIV. Real world population studies show that a man with a natural penis is at no higher risk of HIV and HPV.
The International Journal of Men's Health published results of a study that showed circumcised men are 4.5 times more likely to experience erectile dysfunction due to loss of sensitivity. In a further study, The British Journal of Urology International reports that circumcised men can experience up to a 75 percent reduction in sensitivity compared to men who are not circumcised.
The knowledge of the this WOUNDING affecting sexual pleasure and function goes back years so there is NO IF as to SEXUAL HARM, it is a matter of HOW BAD IS IT for any particular guy. Maimonides (the Torah scholar) noted that the act that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and sometimes perhaps diminishes the pleasure is indubitable. Kellogg declared a ‘war on masturbation’ at the end of the 19th century and advocated circumcision to curb male sexual urges by removing the main male pleasure parts.
The parts of the penis that are cut off are some of the most highly innervated parts of the human. The lips, nipples and fingertips have similar touch sense. To push this unnatural practice is wrong.
ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful, and Condoms) is the way to stop HIV. Promoting genital surgery will cost African lives, not save them. The only randomized controlled trial into male-to-female transmission, reported from Rakai, Unganda that the men circumcised were 62% MORE likely to infect their partners with HIV than the intact men were (Wawer & Gray 2009). In 2010 Bailey followed up with the men of Kisumu, Kenya and reported the circumcised men there were NOT less likely to have HIV after all. A 2007 U.S. military study found circumcision does not affect HIV rates in American men. A study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine (2012) among Caribbean men reflects that "compared with uncircumcised men, [circumcised men] have accumulated larger numbers of STI in their lifetime, have higher rates of previous diagnosis of warts, and were more likely to have HIV infection." Finally and most importantly, circumcision makes men less tolerant of using condoms, because it reduces penile sensitivity. Circumcision is a very poor replacement for condoms.