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aaron motsoaledi, mmc, neonatal circumcision, the new ageTNA fails to localise neonatal circumcision debate
Kim Johnson
31 August 2012
An extensive article in The New Age (TNA) on neonatal medical male circumcision (MMC) in the United States is a fish out of water.
Apparently The New Age has space to spare. Tuesday’s (28 August 2012) edition of the paper saw a significant amount of space dedicated to an article on neonatal circumcision in the United States, despite the fact the article is not applicable to the South African situation and did not attempt to draw any parallels.
The only South African aspect to the article was an arbitrary picture of Aaron Motsoaledi captioned: “Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi is also an advocate of male circumcision”.
If placing Motsoaledi in the frame was an attempt to justify such an extensive article on a subject that doesn’t hold any water for South Africans, it fell flat. The article goes on ad nauseum about American studies, with comment from American doctors.
At the heart of the matter is context. Americans are debating the pros and cons of neo-natal circumcision because they are concerned with conditions like penile cancer and urinary tract infections and less so with HIV and other STIs.
On the other hand South Africa is battling an HIV epidemic unlike anything America has ever seen. And in order to address the spread of HIV, South Africa has begun to scale up MMC among men older than sixteen. Although neonatal circumcision was featured in the latest NSP it hasn’t been pushed as aggressively as MMC among adult men.
Given the large-scale roll out of medical male circumcision in South Africa it probably would have been more pertinent and more constructive to have written a comprehensive article on neonatal MMC as it applies to South Africa, rather than allocating large amounts of print to information that is simply nice to know .
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