Prevalence of circumcision

Since 2010, both the World Health Organization and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS have been promoting a higher rate of circumcision prevalence as a prevention against HIV transmission and some STIs in areas with high HIV transmission and low circumcision rates.

[14][16] In 2020, the World Health Organization reiterated that it is an efficacious prophylactic intervention if carried out by medical professionals under safe conditions in areas of high HIV/AIDS prevalence.

[21] Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom are examples of countries that have seen a decline in male circumcision in recent decades, while there have been indications of increasing demand in southern Africa, partly for preventive reasons due to the HIV epidemic there.

[23] However, the rate varies widely between different regions, and among ethnic and religious groups, with Muslim North Africans practising it for religious reasons, central Africans as part of ethnic rituals or local custom, and some traditionally non-circumcising populations in the South recently adopting the practice due to measures by the World Health Organization to prevent AIDS.

[13][27] Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Rep), Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia.

[28] Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo (Dem Rep), Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Togo.

[13][27] Less than 20% of the population are circumcised in Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Saint Lucia, The Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela.

[33] A recent (2020) HIV study conducted in Mexico City found a participant circumcision rate of 23% (255/1118).

[34] In 2012 a random sample of male visitors to a STI center in San Juan were surveyed on various topics, the reported circumcision rate was 32.4%.

[39] However, studies conducted in 1977–1978 revealed a wide variation in the incidence of circumcision between different provinces and territories.

[41] A survey of Canadian maternity practices conducted in 2006/2007, and published in 2009 by the national public health agency, found a newborn circumcision rate of 31.9%.

[36][42] A more recent survey conducted in 2011 on expecting couples in Saskatchewan (average age 30.3) found the prevalence of circumcision among the male participants to be 61%.

[52] Another study, published in early 2009, found a difference in the neonatal male circumcision rate of 24% between states with and without Medicaid coverage.

The first is the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which records circumcisions performed at any time at any location.

[45][54][55] Circumcision was the second-most common procedure performed on patients under one year of age, after routine inoculations and prophylactic vaccinations.

[58] Bhutan, Burma, China, Cambodia, Hong Kong,[59] India, Japan, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam.

[59] A survey on men who regularly visit female sex workers from 2012 found a circumcision rate of 28%.

[64] At the time, the authors commented that "South Korea has possibly the largest absolute number of teenage or adult circumcisions anywhere in the world.

[63] Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh,[13] Bahrain, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Israel,[65] Pakistan,[13] Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Palestine, the Philippines,[31] Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

[66][67] Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany,[68] Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine,[26] and the United Kingdom.

[69] Rickwood et al. reported that the proportion of English boys circumcised for medical reasons had fallen from 35% in the early 1930s to 6.5% by the mid-1980s.

Among participants of the HELIUS study, recruited between 2011 and 2015 (age 18–70), the circumcision rate for Dutch men without a migration background was 9%.

[76] A small study from 2019 that recruited homosexual men suffering from various STDs found that 16% of the participants were circumcised.

[13] In Slovenia, a 1999–2001 national probability sample of the general population aged 18–49 years found that overall, 4.5% of Slovenian male citizens reported being circumcised.

[90] A study on genital sensitivity from 2013 recruited ~1400 adult men through leaflets randomly distributed at railway stations in Belgium.

[86] According to data from the National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance (NIHDI or RIZIV), the number of circumcisions performed in Belgium amounted to 25,286 in the year of 2011.

[92] The Australian Longitudinal Study of Health and Relationships is a computer assisted telephone interview of males aged 16–64 that uses a nationally representative population sample.

[96] Medicare Australia records show the number of males younger than six months that underwent circumcision dropped from 19,663 in 2007/08 to 6,309 (4%) in 2016/17[97] and further to 3,992 (2.48%) in 2023.