| Male circumcision could prevent millions of AIDS deaths: Study -
12-07-2006, 08:26 PM
Practicing Male Circumcision (MC) could significantly reduce HIV infection and related deaths, a study today said.
Taking into account information on Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection rates and the prevalence of male circumcision across Africa, the researchers have calculated that if all men are circumcised over the next 10 years, some two million new infections and around 3,00,000 deaths could be avoided.
A large Randomised Control Trial (RCT) research, conducted in Africa, has shown that circumcision reduced the chance of HIV infection among men by about 60 per cent, the study released by the open source Public Library of Science (PLOS) Medicine said on Monday.
Male circumcision has been practised by most of Africa's ethnic groups for many centuries. People in their late childhood or early adolescence have been subjected to this practice in certain Muslim populations across the world.
The multi-disciplinary RCT on circumcised and uncircumcised men was conducted under the leadership of the WHO’s Brian G Williams of the Stop TB Department, Geneva in collaboration with the department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Policy, Evidence, and Partnerships Department, Geneva amongst others.
The study explored the implications of promoting MC as a public health intervention to control HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, where the prevalence of MC is low but HIV high.
Looking at a variety of possible outcomes that might arise if the practice is widely promoted and making calculations for 10, 20 and 30 years time, the researchers conclude that the protective benefit to HIV-negative men will be immediate.
The full impact of MC on HIV-related illness and death will only be apparent in ten to twenty years, they said.
But the full impact of the practice on HIV-related illness and death will only be in the future. After 20 years, the researchers say, the number of lives saved, would be somewhere between 1.6 million to 5.8 million.
MC could avert 2 million new HIV infections and 0.3 million deaths over the next ten years in sub-Saharan Africa. In the following decade, it could avert a further 3.7 million new HIV infections and 2.7 million deaths due to the disease, the study observed.
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