The day of the assembly-line circumcision is drawing closer.
Now that three studies have shown that circumcising adult heterosexual men is one of the most effective “vaccines” against AIDS — reducing the chances of infection by 60 percent or more — public health experts are struggling to find ways to make the process faster, cheaper and safer.
The goal is to circumcise 20 million African men by 2015, but only about 600,000 have had the operation thus far. Even a skilled surgeon takes about 15 minutes, most African countries are desperately short of surgeons, and there is no Mohels Without Borders.
So donors are pinning their hopes on several devices now being tested to speed things up.
Dr. Stefano Bertozzi, director of H.I.V. for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said it had its eyes on two, named PrePex and the Shang Ring, and was supporting efforts by the World Health Organization to evaluate them.
Circumcision is believe to protect heterosexual men because the foreskin has many Langerhans cells, which pick up viruses and “present” them to the immune system — which H.I.V. attacks.
PrePex, invented in 2009 by four Israelis after one of them, a urologist, heard an appeal for doctors to do circumcisions in Africa, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration three weeks ago. The W.H.O. will make a decision on it soon, said Mitchell Warren, an AIDS-prevention expert who closely follows the process.
From the initial safety studies done so far, PrePex is clearly faster, less painful and more bloodless than any of its current rivals. And it relies on the simplest and least-threatening technology — a rubber band.
by Donald G. McNeil, Jr., NY Times | Read more:
