ISRAEL21c
by Karin Kloosterman
While San Francisco politicians debate the necessity of the male foreskin removal rite, citing human rights concerns, Zulu King Goodwill Zwelethini of KwaZulu-Natal nods his head. The tribal leader of KwaZulu-Natal, a province of 10 million people in South Africa, recently rescinded a 200-year-old ban on the age-old practice of male circumcision, still conducted in many regions in Africa, after seeing the evidence on the spread of AIDS.
Some estimates suggest than more than half of all HIV infections could be stopped if men are circumcised. Very conservative estimates are one in 10.
"Circumcision is one of the interventions that reduce the risk of transmission," says Maureen Malowany, a medical historian grounded in evidence-based medicine. The Canadian-Israeli woman has started volunteering for the Jerusalem AIDS Project (JAIP), and since March, as the NGO's country coordinator for South Africa, has traveled there twice to help train Zulu medical personnel in the practice of male medical circumcision.
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