Circumcision 'Aids prevention'

2007-12-03 15:28

Lusaka - A southern African radio correspondent has been receiving a flood of text messages and cellphone calls - some from offended listeners and readers.

The response isn't to a story on politics, corruption or soccer - all topics likely to elicit passionate responses.

Rather, Zambia-based Kennedy Gondwe said in an interview on Friday, he was attracting attention because he chose to get circumcised as a way of protecting himself from Aids, and took the British Broadcasting Corp's radio and web audience through the procedure with him.

A study published in the Lancet medical journal in February concluded that the findings of three major trials - in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda - show that circumcision could significantly reduce men's chances of contracting the virus that causes Aids.

'I go for test several times'

United Nations health agencies followed up with an endorsement of circumcision in the fight against HIV, but stressed that the procedure offered only partial protection.

Frank talk about Aids, and about prevention methods, was still rare in Zambia, where HIV prevalence was 16%. That's what made Gondwe's public testimony even more striking.

A prominent Zambian journalist, Mildred Mpundu, died in November after going public with her HIV-positive status earlier this year and urging her fellow journalists to get tested.

Gondwe, a 27-year-old who said he undergoes an Aids test several times a year, said he found it "sad" that more people didn't talk about circumcision as a prevention method.

He said: "We as journalists also have a role to play in the fight against the disease." Gondwe, on the radio piece and in an online diary on Friday, recounted going the procedure on November 22.

SA 'hardest hit by Aids'

Listeners could hear him gasp as a doctor injected him with a local anesthetic, but he assured them that the procedure was otherwise painless. He was up, walking to his car and driving himself home soon afterward.

Gondwe radio piece debuted on the Outlook radio programme the BBC said reached 37 million listeners around the world. He was to appear on another BBC radio programme on Saturday, World Aids Day.

Dr Jan van den Ende, a microbiologist at Toga Laboratory, which provided Aids testing and counseling in neighbouring South Africa, the country hardest hit by Aids, said it was not clear why circumcision provided the protection it did.

He described it as a relatively simple and painless procedure, something Gondwe's story made clear.

Gondwe's testimonial "can do a lot to allay the fears of people, in particular those who are not very well educated," said van den Ende.

While one admiring web reader from Zambia told Gondwe he would soon follow his example, the reporter said others were offended in a region, where in some communities, tradition frowned upon circumcision. Gondwe's Tumbuka people of Zambia's Northern Province did not embrace circumcision, he said.

- AP