Thursday, December 14, 2006

Spend Money on Circumcision to fight AIDS?


NYT reports on an interesting study on AIDS in Africa;

Among men in these trials, adult male circumcision reduced the risk of acquiring HIV infection by 48 percent in the Ugandan study and by 53 percent in the Kenyan study.”


It seems it make sense spend money on circumcision ( it won’t make much of a difference in US- 77 percent of men here reported being circumcised);

Dr. Mark Dybul, executive director of President Bush’s $15 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, said in a statement that his agency “will support implementation of safe medical male circumcision for H.I.V./AIDS prevention” if world health agencies recommend it.
He also warned that it was only one new weapon in the fight, adding, “Prevention efforts must reinforce the A.B.C. approach — abstain, be faithful, and correct and consistent use of condoms.”

Researchers have long noted that parts of Africa where circumcision is common — particularly the Muslim countries of West Africa — have much lower AIDS rates, while those in southern Africa, where circumcision is rare, have the highest…

Male circumcision also benefits women. For example, a study of the medical records of 300 Ugandan couples last year estimated that circumcised men infected with H.I.V. were about 30 percent less likely to transmit it to their female partners.

Earlier studies on Western men have shown that circumcision significantly reduces the rate at which men infect women with the virus that causes cervical cancer. A study published in 2002 in The New England Journal of Medicine found that uncircumcised men were about three times as likely as circumcised ones with a similar number of sexual partners to carry the
human papillomavirus.


Related;
The Macroeconomics of HIV/AIDS
‘For inches and centimeters, let fools contend’
A circumcision kit from a poor country
AIDS Requires a Lateral Approach
History of Circumcision

1 comment:

Marshall Jevons said...

Circumcision can cut the rate of HIV infection in heterosexual men by 50%, results from two African trials show.

The findings are so striking, the US National Institutes of Health decided it would be unethical to continue and stopped the trials early....

But after an interim review of the data by the NIH Data and Safety Monitoring Board decided to halt the trials as it was unethical not to offer circumcision in the men who were acting as controls

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6176209.stm