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"A cut that could save lives"
The
Star (www.thestar.com.my)
(12/07/06)
WASHINGTON: Circumcising men routinely across Africa could prevent millions
of deaths from AIDS, World Health Organisation researchers and colleagues
reported on Monday.
They analysed data from trials that showed men who had been circumcised had
a significantly lower risk of HIV infection, and calculated that if all men
were circumcised over the next 10 years, some two million new infections and
around 300,000 deaths could be avoided.
Researchers believe circumcision helps cut infection risk because the
foreskin is covered in cells the virus seems able to infect easily.
The virus may also survive better in a warm, wet environment like that found
beneath a foreskin.
So if men were circumcised, fewer would become infected and thus could not
infect their female partners.
HIV, which causes AIDS, now infects close to 40 million people and has
killed another 25 million. It mostly affects sub-Saharan Africa and the main
mode of transmission is through heterosexual sex.
Several studies have suggested that men who are circumcised have a lower
rate of HIV infection. This has been especially noticeable in some parts of
Africa, where some groups are routinely circumcised while neighbouring
groups are not.
Last year, Dr Bertran Auvert of the French National Research Agency INSERM
and colleagues at WHO found that circumcised men in South Africa were 65%
less likely to become infected with the deadly virus.
His team then did an analysis to see what would happen if all African men
were circumcised.
“In West Africa, male circumcision is common and the prevalence of HIV is
low, while in southern Africa the reverse is true,” they wrote in the
current report, published in the Public Library of Science Medicine.
“This analysis shows that male circumcision could avert nearly six million
new infections and save three million lives in sub-Saharan Africa over the
next twenty years,” they wrote.
Overall, they project that universal male circumcision would reduce the rate
of infections by about 37%.
However they cautioned that “male circumcision alone cannot bring the
HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa under control.” — Reuters
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