If there is a single factor that should stop the circumcision campaigns in Africa immediately, it is this. One in five HIV infections in Africa is caused by medical staff, according to the authors of a series of papers in a publication backed by the UK Royal Society of Medicine.
According to the authors, as reported by The Telegraph, five million new infections are caused annually "by erratic health practices" that include reusing needles and surgical instruments. With a stated goal of millions of circumcisions in the coming years, surgical procedures that would not otherwise occur, the number of iatrogenic cases of HIV are set to skyrocket.
Yet, any hope of addressing the practices that cause these wholly avoidable new infections is questionable because the "mindset is to pretend this is not an issue, perhaps because of the received wisdom or because you don't get funding if you question it, but this does not save lives."
It is a sure bet that the circumcision lobby will likely use this data to argue that funding should be allocated to provide training, equipment and staff outside of the current health care systems. As we've seen previously, the cabal of researchers who promote circumcision as the silver bullet to prevent AIDS could turn this data to their advantage for more money, more control, and greater displacement of strategies that work.
