Circumcision not the answer to HIV in South Africa

A new study shows that circumcised men in South Africa are as likely to be HIV-positive as uncircumcised men.

The study is published in the latest edition of the South African Medical Journal. This comes amid growing calls from government to promote voluntary circumcision as a means of preventing HIV transmission.

The study comes jointly from the Medical Research Council and the Human Sciences Research Council. Other studies have found that circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection. But in this study, over 40% of more than 3000 were only circumcised after their first sexual experience. Of those circumcised after their 17th birthday, two thirds were sexually active beforehand. HIV prevalence was equal at 11% between the circumcised and uncircumcised groups.

When researchers looked only at the sexually active group, circumcision again had no effect on HIV prevalence. It may be that traditional circumcision takes place too late to have any effect - and this forms the bulk of circumcision in South Africa.

And, according to researchers, as long as men have multiple concurrent sexual partners, they will eventually fall prey to HIV infection.