WINDHOEK, NAMIBIA: Men are resisting genital cutting

Namibian men aren't buying it...

Coastweek.com
July 2, 2016

Namibia’s male circumcision initiative to prevent HIV faces headwind

WINDHOEK (Xinhua) -- Circumcised and ready for action?

These four words that are part of a radio advertisement currently gracing the airwaves have aroused mixed feelings among Namibians.

The advertisement is being run by the health ministry as part of a campaign to educate and encourage men to opt for voluntary medical male circumcision.

Namibia aims to circumcise 330, 000 men by 2025 but since the program was officially launched in 2014, just above 30, 000 have taken up the offer.

Most Namibian men, like Windhoek security guards Simeon Hafeni and Gottlieb Kalandu, are refusing to let go of their foreskins.

Hafeni, who is from the northern regions of the country where circumcision is not compulsory under tribal beliefs, says he does not see any reason for him to be cut.

“What if I get the cut now, and then tomorrow another disease that needs the foreskin comes by?” he asks.

His workmate, Kalandu quips: “God was not a fool to create men with a foreskin.”
[These are not the best reasons to stay intact. The best reasons are that the foreskin is valuable, and that the protection offered, even if true, is insufficient to substitute cutting for the vastly more protective condoms.]
 
These two could symbolize the difficulty the health ministry’s campaign faces even after rolling out the program as far back as 2009 when the World Health Organization and the United Nations AIDS Organization (UNAIDS) recommended circumcision as one of an HIV preventative measure.

Namibia went on to train more than 260 health care workers to provide deal with circumcision, while 33 district hospitals were made available for the program.

A national strategic plan for 2010/11-2015/16 drawn up and revised in 2013 lists six core program to prevent and control the spread of HIV in the country including circumcision.

The strategic plan states that there is need to reach out to HIV negative adult men and initiate services for adolescents.

Although health ministry spokesperson Ester Paulus said that circumcision is a “low-cost medical intervention”, the strategic plan shows that more than 200 million Namibian dollars (13 million U.S. dollars) was set aside for the first three years.

“Male circumcision is a one-time, low cost medical intervention, which has been recommended by the WHO as part of a comprehensive package of HIV prevention.”

The country also carried out a pilot project in Aug. 2009 in capital Windhoek and at Oshakati, in the north of the country about 700 kilometers from Windhoek.

Realizing that fewer men were volunteering, the health ministry has been on an aggressive campaign. Apart from the advertisements, the health minister, Bernard Haufiku, has also been vocal about the need for men to get the cut.

When the advertisements were launched in May, Haufiku said in high HIV prevalence countries like Namibia, circumcision will at least prevent one in five infections as it reduces the risk of contracting HIV by 60 percent. [This is a dangerously false way of applying this already-misleading statistic.]

Hafeni and Kalandu say they have heard the advertisements, which they think are humorous.
“But radio is radio. I don’t believe everything I hear on radio,” Kalandu says.

NAMIBIA: First Lady condemns traditional circumcision

AllAfrica.com
June 24, 2013

Namibia: Harmful Male Circumcision Condemned

by Kuzeeko Tjitemisa

Keetmanshoop — Namibian First Lady Penehupifo Pohamba has condemned all practices within the traditional, religious and social environment that are detrimental to the well-being and general development of the African child.

In her statement read by Councillor Jan Schotlz during the commemoration of the Day of the Africa Child held at the J Stephanus Stadium last Friday, Pohamba specifically singled out traditional circumcision as being harmful to children. She said that such social and cultural practices female genital mutilation, infanticide, child labour and forced marriages. "It is about time we examined our positions when it comes to these harmful social practices affecting our children," she said and added that a cursory look at the situation painted a picture that suggested that "we all have thrown [up] our hands in despair, giving an aura of morality to practitioners and believers of these practices."

... She further said there is a growing problem of children subjected to all forms of harmful practices, such as child labour and exploitation; traditional male circumcision of young boys, but also social practices such as neglect, baby dumping, sexual abuse, as well as the phenomena of sugar daddies and sugar mommies. ... Today we are not calling for culture to be done away with, but for all of us to relook some of these practices and to make a decision: is it beneficial or is it harmful. If we find that it is harmful, then I'm calling on all of us today to make a serious effort to do away with these harmful cultural practices," she said

"You are our hope for a better tomorrow. I want to call on all of you, to grab all opportunities at your disposal to equip yourself with knowledge, to study hard, and know where you can report incidents of harmful social and cultural practices and all other forms of violence against children," she emphasised. ... The Day of the African Child is marked on June 16 each year to honour the memory of schoolchildren killed and the courage of all those who marched in 1976 during a demonstration in Soweto, South Africa.

On that day, an estimated 10 000 schoolchildren gathered at the Orlando Stadium in Soweto to protest against an apartheid-inspired education system in that country and to demand instruction in their own languages instead of Afrikaans. The unarmed learners were, however, brutally attacked by the police and in the process an estimated 176 children lost their lives while thousands of them got wounded what has come to be known throughout the world as the "Soweto Uprising."

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AFRICA: No money for HIV programmes that work, only circumcision

May 10, 2012

Africa: Less Global Funds, More Problems

By Laura Lopez Gonzalez,
Fund medicines or fund the programmes that support uptake and adherence? That's the choice countries are now facing amid Global Fund shortfalls. With money tight, countries are slashing civil society-led HIV and TB programmes - treatment supporters, community-based volunteers, support for people living with HIV - to safeguard essential services, according to preliminary research being conducted by the Open Society Foundations.

In November 2011, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria faced US$2.2 billion in unpaid donor pledges and cancelled its Round 11 of funding. This was the most dramatic manifestation of years of broken donor promises.

Two years earlier, Global Fund donors reneged on almost 15 percent of pledges - a figure that rose to almost a quarter of donor pledges in 2010, according to former Global Fund Executive Director, Michel Kazatchkine's November 2011 report to the board.

To ascertain the impact on civil society of these Global Fund shortfalls, OSF undertook research in three countries that had planned to apply for Round 11 funding - Swaziland, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

Through interviews with nearly 45 representatives from civil society, Global Fund Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs), HIV and TB programmes, and UN agencies, OSF found that these countries are facing funding gaps for essential services such as HIV and TB testing and treatment, prevention of mother-to-child transmission services (PMTCT), and support for orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC).
The research found that to free up funding for these initiatives, all three countries are cutting the kinds of complementary, civil society-led activities identified as 'critical enablers' in the UNAIDS Strategic Framework.

Swaziland has now halted HIV prevention programmes with the exception of PMTCT and medical male circumcision and may re-programme phase II of its current Global Fund money to shift more money towards buffer ARV stocks, according to Vusi Nxumalo, CCM member and Vice Chairperson of the Swaziland National Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS.

Swaziland's Round 11 application - like that of Namibia - would also have been the first to include HIV prevention programming aimed at criminalised, most-at-risk populations, such as sex workers and men-who-have-sex-with-men. In addition, the country would have addressed the needs of its small population of injecting drug users.
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