While I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Mozambique I had the chance to interview three women from my community who were living with HIV, but receiving treatment thanks to PEPFAR (the United State’s multi-billion dollar initiative to combat HIV). I filmed these women as part of a larger video project about preventing HIV/AIDS in Mozambique.
You can see them and hear what they have to say here: http://www.overstream.net/view.php?oid=spr5lzmgn8l6
If a pharmaceutical company produced an HIV vaccine that gave up to 40% protection against HIV transmission in men, it would be a pretty big breakthrough, wouldn’t it? It turns out that there actually is something that can give men substantial protection against HIV transmission- circumcision! Studies have shown that circumcision gives men 44% protection compared to uncircumcised men (up to 70% more protection for men considered ‘high risk’, i.e. if they already have STIs). The study (read about it here) was conducted in Uganda. They actually stopped the study early because the results were so dramatic that it was unethical to keep an uncircumcised control group.
However in the world of HIV/AIDS prevention, this information is INCREDIBLY UNDERUTILIZED!!! Very few people are talking about circumcision as a protective measure for men against HIV, and that has to change.
Let me give you a real life example of how circumcision can reduce HIV rates. In Mozambique, the coast is predominately Muslim, while the interior of the country tends to be Christian. The Muslims also practice circumcision while their Christian counterparts do not. If you look at a map of HIV/AIDS rates by district in Mozambique, there is a noticeably lower infection rate along the coast. One major hypothesis for this is that people on the coast tend to be circumcised.
What should you take away from this story? Circumcision is an incredibly effective yet underutilized tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Do your best to promote education about the benefits of circumcision!!