Circumcision in Africa
The procedure is also practiced by some cultural groups or individual family lines in Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and in southern Africa.
[6] The cultural practice of circumcision may have spread from the Central Sahara, toward the south in Sub-Saharan Africa and toward the east in the region of the Nile.
[8][9] At the mastaba of Ankhmahor in Saqqara, an engraved wall provides an account of Uha, dated to the 23rd century BCE, which indicates that he and others underwent male circumcision.
[10] A papyrus, which was part of the Serapeum's Ptolemaios archive at Memphis and has been dated to 163 BCE, indicated that an ancient Egyptian girl, Tathemis, was scheduled to undergo female circumcision.
[10] In the 19th century CE, Shaka, a Zulu king, prohibited male circumcision due to concerns that young circumcised men might be less interested in joining as warriors in the military force he was amassing and uniting in the region of southern Africa and might be more interested in seeking opportunities for having sex.
[15] Studies evaluating the complications due to traditional male circumcision have found rates varying from 35% (Kenya) to 48% (South Africa).
Infection, delayed wound healing, glans amputation and injury, bleeding, loss of penile sensitivity, excessive removal of foreskin, and death are the major complications reported.
[20] The male circumcision rate in Ivory Coast is around 95%,[25] with operations conducted in hospitals and health clinics.
Almost all men (98 percent) in Liberia are circumcised,[26] with operations carried out in hospitals and health clinics.
[20] The male circumcision rate in Sierra Leone, estimated in 2016, is around 96.1%,[20] with operations carried out in hospitals and health clinics.
[20] The male child circumcision rate in Cameroon is around 90%, in common with other countries of West and North Africa, with operations performed in hospitals and clinics.
The circumcision ceremony was very public, and required a display of courage under the knife in order to maintain the honor and prestige of the young man and his family.
The only form of anesthesia was a bath in the cold morning waters of a river, which tended to numb the senses to a minor degree.
[33] Despite the loss of the rites and ceremonies that accompanied male circumcision in the past, the physical operation remains crucial to personal identity and pride, and acceptance in society.
[43] Amongst the Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania, male circumcision has historically been the graduation element of an educational program which taught tribal beliefs, practices, culture, religion and history to youth who were on the verge of becoming full-fledged members of society.
The circumcision ceremony was very public, and required a display of courage under the knife in order to maintain the honor and prestige of the young man and his family.
The only form of anesthesia was a bath in the cold morning waters of a river, which tended to numb the senses to a minor degree.
[20] In 2015, the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics, a non profit health association affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, completed a voluntary circumcision project, covering three traditionally non-circumcising Tanzanian regions, Iringa, Njombe and Tabora, which circumcised 400,000 men.
Following this, Singida, Kigoma, Mara and Morogoro will also see efforts to scale up circumcision[46] Amongst the Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania, male circumcision has historically been the graduation element of an educational program which taught tribal beliefs, practices, culture, religion and history to youth who were on the verge of becoming full-fledged members of society.
The circumcision ceremony was very public, and required a display of courage under the knife in order to maintain the honor and prestige of the young man and his family.
The only form of anesthesia was a bath in the cold morning waters of a river, which tended to numb the senses to a minor degree.
Medical related circumcision is mainly to reduce the transmission of human immunodeficiency virus and sexually transmitted illnesses.
There are fears that there is a heightened risk of spreading human immunodeficiency virus as the surgeons use the same blade and encourage boys to have sex with women after the ceremony.
[20] In some South African ethnic groups, circumcision has roots in several belief systems, and is performed most of the time on teenage boys: The young men in the eastern Cape belong to the Xhosa ethnic group for whom circumcision is considered part of the passage into manhood. ...
A law was recently introduced requiring initiation schools to be licensed and only allowing circumcisions to be performed on youths aged 18 and older.
But Eastern Cape provincial Health Department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo told Reuters news agency that boys as young as 11 had died.
[20] WHO identified 14 countries with high rates of heterosexual human immunodeficiency virus transmission and historically low levels of male circumcision coverage (nationally or sub-nationally), and were priorities for scale-up.
They are Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Eswatini, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania.
[57] PEPFAR (the US President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief) supported over 15 million circumcisions in 14 countries in Southern and Eastern Africa from 2007 to 2017.
[58][59] In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) reiterated that male circumcision is an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention if carried out by medical professionals under safe conditions.
