Sir,
Good to read your mail on Male circumcision. I work as the M and E Manager for Pro-Health International, a Nigerian NGO that renders free health services in rural areas.
We were privileged to be deliver services in some rural parts on Ondo state last year and part of what i noticed was a problem was a high uncircumcised male population. The age range we saw spanned from Neonates to those in their mid Twenties.
Contrary to some publications I had read that specified high circumcision rates reaching 90% for the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria, this Yoruba population had a very high uncircumcised population at least from the about 60 cases that came to our camp for circumcision.
I absolutely agree that we need to roll out guidelines to guide circumcision practices in Nigeria and beyond as well as train more people on how to perform such practices.
The population we visited was erstwhile a closed population with a low HIV prevalence. However, owing to increased economic activity in this area (oil exploration) and increasing military presence, there is also a multiplied risk of increasing the incidence of HIV in this population.
I am advocating for an aggressive drive towards getting to the route of why unlike other Yoruba population, there is a high uncircumcised lot here.
Likewise, we are to visit this same locality sometime this year and we intend going to that location with at least 2 urologists.
Thank you.
Olusesan Makinde
Epidemiologist
mailto:sesmak@yahoo.co.uk