Overview - at the cutting edge - male circumcision and HIV
Is mass male circumcision the new big thing in HIV prevention, or is it a risky social experiment that threatens to divert funding from tried and tested interventions?
UNAIDS is careful in its assessment: "Without question, we absolutely have to ensure that men and women are awarbe that male circumcision is not a 'magic bullet'; it doesn't provide total protection and it doesn't mean people can stop taking the safe sex precautions they were already using."
The caution is a response to the excitement - and debate - triggered by the results of three randomised trials in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda in 2005 and 2006, which seemed to demonstrate that circumcision reduced the risk of HIV infection among men by between 50 percent and 60 percent.
