Male Circumcision in Our Society - A Paradigm Shift

Circumcision is an operation as old as mankind, it is performed worldwide by many tribes and cultures as an initiation rite and it is routinely done at birth for a large number of boys in much of the English speaking world. In Zambia it has been practiced by a minority group of tribes from times immemorial often referred to as Mukanda. In the recent past there has been a phenomenal rise in the numbers of people requesting to be circumcised. . We looked at the requests for circumcision from the beginning of June 2007 to the end of May2008, we collected the reasons for the request, age and tribe of the requester. Circumcisions which were actually carried out, the time it took for the wound to completely heal and complications if any were noted. We also looked at the Operation records for circumcision from December 1999 to December 2003. A period of five years were also studied. There were 212 requests for circumcision in the year under review. The youngest was three months old the oldest was 47 years the mean age was 38.3 years The main reason for requesting circumcision was for social reasons, The findings were 37 % in children and 53 % in adults. Of the 212 requests, 128 (60.4 %) were circumcised.117 (91.4 %) were fully healed by the end of two weeks.11 (8.6 %) patients had delayed healing. The thinking behind the social request was HIV infection prevention. We also noted that the request for circumcision cut across the tribal divide.