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Adult males focus of Kenya’s voluntary circumcision program
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From 2008 to 2011, 340,958 males underwent voluntary medical male circumcision at a Ministry of Health site in Kenya, researchers from the CDC reported in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Only 14.4% of these men were aged at least 25 years, making this age group a key challenge to the goal to circumcise 80% of uncircumcised males aged 15 to 49 years in Kenya by 2013. Among those who received a circumcision, only 27.5% returned within 7 days of the procedure for a postoperative review.
Most of the circumcisions were performed in the Nyanza province, where the circumcision prevalence was only 48.2%. Approximately 85% of males in Kenya were circumcised, but nearly half of those not circumcised resided in the Nyanza province.
Kenya’s Ministry of Health implemented voluntary medical male circumcision programs at CDC-supported sites in 2008 after WHO and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS recommended that countries offer male circumcision as an HIV prevention measure. The highest HIV prevalence rate among uncircumcised males aged 15 to 64 years is in Nyanza province, followed by Rift Valley, Nairobi and Western provinces. These provinces were priority regions for the circumcision programs.
“In spite of multiple challenges, Kenya has made considerable progress toward its goal of 80% voluntary medical male circumcision coverage,” the CDC researchers wrote. “Aspects of Kenya’s voluntary circumcision strategies might be appropriate for programs in other sub-Saharan countries implementing voluntary circumcision programs for HIV prevention.”
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