US funds Israels circumcision plan to fight AIDS in Zimbabwe

US funds Israels circumcision plan to fight AIDS in Zimbabwe

Muslims are not isolated from the rest of the non-Muslim societies. Notably, however, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in predominantly Muslim countries is significantly less than among the countries where Christians or Jews are in majority. For example, in Morocco with a 98% Muslim population three out of 10,000 people have HIV/AIDS. On the other hand, in Botswana with 2% Muslim population, 3,580 out of 10,000 have HIV/AIDS, while in Zionist-state with 80% Jewish population 858 out of 10,000 people have HIV/AIDS. Last year, over 2.4 million Africans died from AIDS related illnesses. more
The U.S. ranks high on President Robert Mugabe’s enemies list, but at ground level it is leading a war on AIDS that may help save the life of 32-year-old Tineyi Marokwe and hundreds of thousands of other Zimbabweans.
The weapon is cheap and simple: male circumcision, considered a significant reducer of AIDS transmission.
In a 10-minute surgical operation, Marokwe recently became one of more than a million Zimbabwean men in the most sexually active age group who are being targeted for circumcision during the next seven years.
Dr. Bill Jansen, a senior American adviser with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Zimbabwe, says trials and circumcision pilot programs in South Africa and East Africa have shown a reduction in HIV infection by 60 percent.
The Zimbabwe program, begun in May 2009, has carried out 12,000 circumcisions. The U.S. spent $6.6 million on it in the first year and more money is promised as the program scales up.
So vilified are Western nations by Mugabe that few Zimbabweans realize their continuing aid programs are the mainstay of humanitarian assistance to the troubled nation.
The U.S. is Zimbabwe’s biggest aid donor — more than $1 billion since 2002 — and the biggest contributor to nationwide modern AIDS clinics that have tested and counseled 2 million people. This month it pledged another $50 million to its wider AIDS programs that include supplies of AIDS drugs.
While Mugabe has done nothing to hinder the program, some volunteers assigned to explain sexual health issues to the poor have been accused by Mugabe’s supporters of abetting a U.S. political agenda and working for the opposition in next year’s election.more

Israeli doctors have been training their counterparts in male circumcision, hoping expertise in the ancient technique will help in the battle against the modern scourge of AIDS. The United Nations announced last year that the procedure could reduce the rate of HIV transmission by up to 60 percent. It was in Israel, with its experience performing adult male circumcision on a wide scale, that the international medical community found an unlikely partner in the global fight against AIDS.
“Israeli medicine and public health are positioned as a real asset in African countries,” said Dr. Inon Schenker, a director of Operation Abraham, the consortium that sent the doctors to Swaziland and plans to send more training teams to Africa.

It’s a model organizations such as the World Health Organization and the United Nations would like to see replicated in Africa as a tool for combating the spread of HIV.more

thank you Battleskin for helping me put this together~