By Agwanda Powerman
The 2010 Rapid Results Initiative (RRI)—an intensive effort to meet the anticipated high demand for Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) services in Nyanza Province during the upcoming school holidays—was launched today at the Jomo Kenyatta Sports Ground.
By increasing access to the services and promoting their use, the government’s VMMC programme hopes to reach about 41,000 men and boys with VMMC and related HIV prevention services by 22 December.
“The government and its partners will work together with all the available resources to make VMMC widely accessible in 12 districts in Nyanza,” said Nyanza Provincial Commissioner Francis Mutie, who launched the 2010 RRI.
His speech was read by Kisumu East District Commissioner, Mabeya Mogaka,he was assisted by Dr. Jackson Kioko, the Provincial Director of Public Health and Sanitation.
During the first RRI in November-December 2009, more than 37,000 men and boys were circumcised within 30 days.
This year’s RRI builds on the lessons learned from last year’s initiative, with even greater emphasis on bringing services closer to communities and communicating the benefits of VMMC for HIV prevention.
Mr. Mutie asked the citizens of Nyanza to support the 2010 RRI. “I especially urge men ages 15 to 49 years of age to heed this call,” he said, explaining that men in this age group can benefit most from male circumcision because they tend to be sexually active and therefore most at risk of acquiring and transmitting HIV.
About 47 percent of clients during the 2009 RRI were younger than 15 circumcision will help protect these boys from HIV in the future, but it will not have an immediate effect on Kenya ’s HIV epidemic because most of them are not yet sexually active.
That is why the 2010 includes special efforts to encourage men and teens who are older than 15 to seek VMMC services. Satisfied clients from this age group will inform their peers about the benefits of medical male circumcision, and the program me will redouble its efforts to make VMMC available at convenient times and locations.
These efforts will help the government reach its ambitious objective of providing comprehensive HIV prevention services that include male circumcision to 426,500 men and boys in Nyanza by 2013. Doing so will help the VMMC programme achieve its ultimate goal of circumcising 1.1 million men nationwide by 2014, which would prevent an estimated 900,000 HIV infections in men and women.
The partners collaborating with the ministries of health to implement the 2010 RRI are the Nyanza Reproductive Health Society (NRHS), IMPACT Research and Development Organization, Family AIDS Care and Education Services, the Catholic Medical Mission Board, the AIDS Population and Health Integrated Assistance (APHIA) II Nyanza Project, the Male Circumcision Consortium (which consists of FHI, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and EngenderHealth working with NRHS), PSI, the C-Change Project of the Academy for Educational Development, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Pix 1 (Dr. Ochieng and Dr. Kioko): Dr. Athananius Ochieng’, Male Circumcision Programme Manager at the National AIDS/STI Control Programme (NASCOP) and Dr. Jackson Kioko, Nyanza Provincial Director of Public Health and Sanitation, confer during the launch of the Rapid Results Initiative to accelerate access to voluntary medical male circumcision programme at the Jomo Kenyatta Grounds in Kisumu, on 18th November 2010.
Pix 2 ; A procession to mark the launch of the Rapid Results Initiative to accelerate access to voluntary medical male circumcision program me held from Kondele to the Jomo Kenyatta grounds in Kisumu.
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These “estimates” of the number of HIV cases “prevented” are just pulled out of a hat. The WHOLE basis of the claim that circumcision even reduces the risk of HIV from women to men is based on three trials. A total of 5,400 men were circumcised and a similar number made to wait. After less than two years, 64 of the circumcised men had HIV and 137 of the non-circumcised. So 73 men didn’t get HIV who might have if they hadn’t been circumcised. To conclude from that, that circumcising 1.1 million will prevent 900,000 cases is nonsense. If men imagine that circumcision protects them completely and throw caution to the winds, as they very well may, it could have the opposite effect. We don’t even know for sure how much of AIDS is transmitted sexually.
It is easy for politicians and half educated doctors to use these meaningless statistics to hoodwink the gullible male population with what they want to hear, especially in Nyanza, where HIV prevalence is high. What the men want to hear is how to avoid being infected but have SEX without a condom.
Circumcised or not, if you sleep with a HIV positive person without protection, the chances are high that you may become infected.
The issue of taking your area Mp to court is not the solution to the problem
you are sufering from. My piece of advice to you is that, yuo could have talked as farmily members and solved this case amicabling. The reason being
the Mp might hire a lawyer who may challenge the case hence you will end up
loosing your money.