On December 13, 2006, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the early termination of two randomised controlled trials of male circumcision—in Kenya and Uganda—on the basis of interim evidence that male circumcision provided a protective benefi t against HIV infection of 53% among the 2784 Kenyan men and 51% among the 4996 Ugandan men enrolled in the respective studies. The Kenya and...

This article analyzes the constitutionality of state’s intervention with practice male traditional circumcision in South Africa. The state intervened by promulgating legislation aimed at providing observationof health standards circumcision, issuing permission for performance a operation and holding schools. Provincial statutes are promulgated Application Health Standards Traditional Circumcisi...

World Health Organization recommends a target for the male circumcision prevalence rate of 80%. This rate will have a substantial impact on the human immunodeficiency virus-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome epidemic in Eastern and Southern Africa. The objective of the study was to assess whether an innovative intervention can lead to an increased voluntary male medical circumcision (VMMC) upta...

HIV/AIDS as a global epidemic has exerted its terrifying influence for quite some time now. Currently, a vaccine for its prevention appears to be near impossible. HIV has spread across the globe without deference to gender, race, religion, or socioeconomic status. Despite a growth in HIV awareness and interventions, there are perplexingly different prevelence rates in different countries with s...

I n this issue, John Hutson has reiterated the conventional Western medical view that ‘‘the surgical argument for circumcision of all neonatal males at present is very weak’’ and he criticises many of the circumcisions performed in later childhood, without anaesthesia, as ‘‘physically cruel and potentially dangerous’’ [see page 238]. He is also of the opinion that ‘‘the diseases which circumcis...

Three interrelated issues coincide to make male circumcision a critical service that needs to be provided as standard care in district health centres in South Africa. One relates to the fact that male circumcision is a long-established social and cultural practice in South Africa, with both traditional and medical antecedents. It is a rite of passage for boys into manhood among the African majo...

This paper presents results from analysis of 64 in-depth interviews with urban men embedded in an experimental quantitative study of demand for medical male circumcision for HIV prevention in Malawi. Despite having expressed genuine interest in circumcision, few study participants (three percent) opted to actually undergo the surgery. The qualitative interviews shed light on the gap between fav...

PURPOSE We wanted to assess the safety and efficacy of nontherapeutic male circumcision through a systematic review of the literature. METHODS We systematically searched The York Centre for Reviews and Disseminations, Cochrane Library, PubMed, and EMBASE databases for randomized controlled trials published between January 1997 and August 2008. Studies reporting on circumcision in an operative...

Male circumcision is one of the most commonly performed procedures in Africa, with a wide variation between the different regions on the practice. This is because circumcision is often done for religious and cultural or traditional reasons, which includes being part of rituals or rite of passage to adulthood. There had been few medical indications for the procedure until the human immunodeficie...

BACKGROUND Zimbabwe adopted voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) as an additional HIV prevention strategy in 2009. A number of studies have been conducted to understand the determinants of VMMC uptake but few studies have examined the characteristics of men who are willing to get circumcised or the link between wanting circumcision and risky sexual behaviour. This study investigated the r...