Maravi

Lewanika Hospital urged to expand male circumcision

COMMENT - This fad has to do with the hysteria around HIV infection, but there is no statistical proof that circumcision prevents HIV infection.

Lewanika Hospital urged to expand male circumcision
By Mwala Kalaluka in Mongu
Wed 21 July 2010, 04:30 CAT

THE World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged management at Mongu's Lewanika General Hospital to expand the recently introduced male circumcision programme in order to reduce the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus.

And the supply of ARV drugs to Lewanika Hospital has been 100 per cent.
During a recent visit to Mongu, WHO country representative Olusegun Babaniyi asked hospital executive director Dr Andrew Silumesii what the capacity of the male circumcision at the hospital was.

Dr Silumesii said the male circumcision programme was commenced through support from JHPIEGO and that it only started about two months ago.

He said since the hospital had no separate facility to carry out male circumcision, they used certain days that were not congested at the main theatre to carry out the surgeries.
Dr Silumesi said the hospital was able to carry out 50 circumcisions per week.
"But we hope we can scale that up once the building is completed," he said.
Dr Silumesii said in 2010 alone, the hospital had conducted about 2,600 circumcisions.

Dr Babaniyi said there was need for the hospital to focus on male circumcision if a way was to be found out of the HIV/AIDS business.

"We need to focus our efforts on male circumcision. It is safe if it can be done under trained hands," Dr Babaniyi said. "There is no reason why our men should wait for too long...it will help in reducing the HIV/AIDS rate."

He said instead of expanding the place of treatment, there was need to expand the circumcision aspect as a preventive measure.

And Dr Silumesii said although the supply of other drugs left much to be desired, the hospital was receiving a 100 per cent supply of ARVs.
"At no time have we run out of ARVs," he said.

Dr Silumesii said as for the other drugs, the hospital was only getting about 46 per cent of what they usually requested and that in most cases, they had to use the grants to add up to the supply from Medical Stores Limited.

Labels: HEALTHCARE

posted by MrK @ 9:32 AM