Rwanda ignores data, buys into circumcision hysteria

The BBC is reporting that Rwanda will begin a mass circumcision campaign to include forced circumcision of minor children. No stranger to drives beginning with "mass", Rwanda's HIV infection rate is higher among the currently circumcised than it is among the intact according to the 2005 Demographic and Health Survey [pdf].  [Original location of pdf.] The HIV/AIDS rate has fallen from 11% of the adult population in 2000 to 3% in 2007 using conventional HIV reduction strategies. A realistic view is that circumcision in Rwanda will likely have no impact on the HIV/AIDS situation or set it back due to disinhibition.

Comments

[IntactwhitemaleUSA]

Dave,

I hate to say it, but I predicted this a number of months ago. Yes, the men in the army will consider it an order. Also, when did voluntary, informed circs among adult men morph into cutting newborns? Ask Daniel Halperin. I'm sure he has an inkling...

[SunkenShip]

Not surprised. The facts about this issue have continually been ignored. I hope Halperin and co. are happy.

[Joe in CA]

This is such a stupid strategy.

Only one thing can happen: there will be even MORE circumcised men with HIV.

It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

Less intact men with HIV can only mean MORE CIRCUMCISED MEN with HIV.

That circ/HIV number will only get bigger as the intact/HIV number shrinks...

Duhhhh....huh-huhhh....

:-P~

[D]

Your comment, "No stranger to drives beginning with 'mass'" was completely uncalled for and in poor taste. Rwanda has made remarkable progress since the genocide and to make a snide comment like that is inappropriate. Please save the history editorial for another blog and concentrate on the issue at hand.

[Joe in CA]

I disagree.

I think this comment was completely appropriate.

It wasn't a "snide comment" in the least, but an allusion to the fact that the people of Rwanda keep getting figuratively gang-raped, and taken advantage of.

This call for mass-circumcision is just going to be one more way in which the people are going to get screwed, being conned into undergoing a worthless procedure that has already been shown to be ineffective in that country.

History is important Mr. D, as those who forget it are doomed to repeat it.
It is a disservice to ask people to be silent about it. People can't learn from the past if they try and pretend it never actually happened.

[David]

D,

To the extent the reference distracts from the issue, I agree. I was clumsily trying to draw attention to the fact that Rwanda is the same country that experienced the genocide and is now proposing this action. Perhaps a secondary point was that the country has been given over to extremes. It was not to judge (as opposed to disagree with) that country or its people.

David

[Hugh7]

Another point of interest from that survey is that the HIV rate is 11% among Muslim women compared to 2.5-3.9% among Christian women. One imagines they don't have sex much outside their own religion, and few of the Christian men are circumcised. That may be an artifact, because there were only 102 Muslim women in the sample, but it certainly doesn't suggest that circumcision is going to protect women. There are so many unanswered questions about the transmission of HIV in Africa, that make circumcision campaigns grotesquely inappropriate.

[Jack-Sprat]

[deleted for abuse]

[Joe in CA]

You mean the statement that "circumcision prevents HIV" ISN'T misleading?

Perhaps the numbers in this study are too small.

Want to try addressing why it is America has an HIV epidemic GREATER than industrialized countries that DO NOT circumcise?

In the mean time, sorry, but circumcision does not prevent HIV. It goes without saying that circumcised men contract HIV and die of AIDS every day. (At least 40% of them, if certain studies are correct...) There is nothing that you can post or cut-and-paste that can refute this.

A mass-circumcision program is a waste of money that could be better spent on education in safer sex practices, and the distribution and instruction in the use of condoms. Not to mention that forcing an elective surgery on non-concenting individuals is a human rights violation.

Individuals pushing for mass-circumcision policies don't seem too interested in actual HIV prevention, but rather, in the propagation of a worthless cosmetic procedure.