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LUSAKA, Zambia - A southern African radio correspondent has been receiving a flood of text messages and cell phone calls - some from offended listeners and readers.
The response isn't to a story on politics, corruption or soccer - all topics likely to elicit passionate responses. Rather, Zambia-based Kennedy Gondwe said in an interview Friday, he is attracting attention because he chose to get circumcised as a way of protecting himself from AIDS, and took the BBC's radio and Web audience through the procedure with him.
A study published in the Lancet medical journal in February concluded that the findings of three major trials - in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda - show that circumcision can significantly reduce men's chances of contracting the virus that causes AIDS.
UN health agencies followed up with an endorsement of circumcision in the fight against HIV, but stressed that the procedure offers only partial protection.
Frank talk about AIDS, and about prevention methods, is still rare in Zambia, where HIV prevalence is 16 per cent. That's what made Gondwe's public testimony even more striking.
A prominent Zambian journalist, Mildred Mpundu, died in November after going public with her HIV-positive status earlier this year and urging her fellow journalists to get tested.
Gondwe, a 27-year-old who says he undergoes an AIDS test several times a year, said he finds it "sad" that more people don't talk about circumcision as a prevention method.
"We as journalists also have a role to play in the fight against the disease," he said.
Gondwe, on the radio piece and in an online diary Friday, recounts going the procedure Nov. 22. Listeners can hear him gasp as a doctor injects him with a local anesthetic, but he assures them the procedure is otherwise painless. He was up, walking to his car and driving himself home soon afterward.
Gondwe radio piece debuted on the Outlook radio program the BBC says reaches 37 million listeners around the world. He was to appear on another BBC radio program Saturday, World AIDS Day.
Dr. Jan van den Ende, a microbiologist at Toga Laboratory, which provides AIDS testing and counseling in neighboring South Africa, the country hardest hit by AIDS, said it was not clear why circumcision provides the protection it does. He described it as a relatively simple and painless procedure, something Gondwe's story made clear.
Gondwe's testimonial "can do a lot to allay the fears of people, in particular (those) who are not very well educated," van den Ende said.
While one admiring Web reader from Zambia told Gondwe he would soon follow his example, the reporter said others were offended in a region where in some communities, tradition frowns upon circumcision. Gondwe's Tumbuka people of Zambia's Northern Province do not embrace circumcision, he said.
David Alnwick, a senior AIDS adviser to UNICEF based in Nairobi, posted a positive response to Gondwe's story on the BBC site, and said in an interview UNICEF supports educating people that "circumcised men are relatively well protected against HIV." But he said there was a danger of creating demand the world's poorest continent is not now prepared to meet.
Alnwick said Zambia has a long waiting list of men who want to be circumcised and only a few centers providing the service. But he says he expects governments to come aboard across the continent and international donors to provide funding.
"There will be a time lag," he said. "The biggest problem will be trained manpower."
Alnwick also cautioned that circumcision does not provide 100 per cent protection. Nothing does.
"There's no magic bullet in AIDS prevention," Alnwick said, noting experts say abstinence, condom use, having few partners and delaying the first sexual experience are all among the steps that need to be encouraged, along with circumcision.
- REUTERS
