Circumcision is known to protect men from acquiring HIV.
But the research, from the Lancet, showed no benefit in those who already had the virus and was stopped early because of the continued risk to women.
Experts say HIV-positive men should still be offered circumcision, but also warned to use condoms..
...
Previous research had suggested women could be protected from HIV if their partner was circumcised.
In this study, 922 uncircumcised, HIV-infected, asymptomatic men aged 15-49 years with HIV were enrolled in the Rakai district of Uganda.
Men were then selected to have immediate circumcision (474 men) or to be given circumcision after two years (448 men).
Almost 170 uninfected female partners of the men were also enrolled, and followed up at six, 12, and 24 months.
However, the trial was ended early because of what the researchers called the "futility" of carrying on, and the second group were not circumcised.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Isn't This Conclusion Obvious?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
Why would you think that conclusion was obvious? It certainly wasn't obvious that circumcising HIV+ men would increase the risk to women by 50%.
This whole circumcision thing to protect against is very questionable anyway. There are six African countries where men are more likely to be HIV+ if they've been circumcised: Rwanda, Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, and Swaziland. Eg in Malawi, the HIV rate is 13.2% among circumcised men, but only 9.5% among intact men. In Cameroon, the HIV rate is 4.1% among circumcised men, but only 1.1% among intact men. If circumcision really worked against AIDS, this just wouldn't happen. We now have people calling circumcision a "vaccine" or "invisible condom", and viewing circumcision as an alternative to condoms.
ABC (Abstinence, Being faithful, Condoms) is the way forward. Promoting genital surgery will cost African lives, not save them.
It's not like we've actually tried the things that do work. In Malawi for instance, only 57% know that condoms protect against HIV/AIDS, and only 68% know that limiting sexual partners protects against HIV/AIDS. There are people who haven't even heard of condoms. It just seems really misguided to be hailing male circumcision as the way forward. It would help if some of the aid donors didn't refuse to fund condom education, or work that involves talking to prostitutes. There are African prostitutes that sleep with 20-50 men a day, and some of them say that hardly any of the men use a condom. If anyone really cares about men, women, and children dying in Africa, surely they'd be focussing on education about safe sex rather than surgery that offers limited protection at best, and runs a high risk of risk compensatory behaviour.
I´ve never heard that circumcision protected against HIV, who said that?
Tails, read the source article and others here at my blog. Search using "circumcision"
Post a Comment