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Zimbabwean parliamentarians ignore call for circumcision
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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Zimbabwe's parliamentarians ignored the vice prime minister's call for circumcision to prevent HIV infection. According to the correspondent of the BBC News, 7 out of 8 Zimbabwean male deputies interviewed rejected this method of fighting HIV.
Earlier, Zimbabwe's deputy prime minister, Thokozani Khupe, appealed to deputies and ministers to undergo circumcision to set an example for the male population of the African country. At the same time, Khupe referred to the data of the World Health Organization, according to which circumcision cuts the risk of contracting HIV with heterosexual contact by 60%.
Last year, Zimbabwe, one of the most affected countries in Africa, launched a campaign to promote circumcision. The organizers of the campaign hope that they will be able to bring the proportion of circumcised young men in the country to 80%.
Meanwhile, circumcision in Zimbabwe is unpopular - it is practiced for religious reasons only by a few and a few ethnic groups.
One of the interviewed BBC Zimbabwean parliamentarians characterized Ms. Khoupe's proposal as "madness." The second deputy said that he does so much to prevent AIDS, showing fellow citizens an example of good behavior.
The initiative was not met by the Minister of National Reconciliation and Reconciliation of Mozes Mzila Ndlovu (Moses Mzila Ndlovu). In his opinion, the idea of universal circumcision is "unnatural". One of the subordinates Ndlovu Nelson Chamisa (Nelson Chamisa) said that circumcision should be a personal matter for everyone. "We need a circumcision of consciousness, and not a circumcision of the organ," he added.