22 Aug 2013

Coordinator of the Safe Male Circumcision (SMC), Mr Conrad Ntsuape, says Botswana still enjoy the financial support of the United States through the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) for the SMC programme.

In an interview, Mr Ntsuape said although there were rumours that PEPFAR had cut the funding, there was nothing on paper that suggested the reports were true.

He said discussions were taking place at ministerial level and that a feedback would be given in September regarding the matter.

He also said HIV positive men were not denied circumcision but rather, as an HIV prevention intervention, circumcision could not be administered without knowing a man’s HIV Status. 

He also explained that the approach of circumcising an HIV positive man was different from that of HIV negative one. HIV positive men could get circumcised if their CD4 counts tolerated surgical incision.

Mr Ntsuape warned that circumcision did not stop an HIV positive man from infecting his sexual partners. Though he could not give figures, Mr Ntsuape said they circumcised HIV positive men during the start of the programme.

He also explained that the PrePex pilot study, which was a new male circumcision method, was going on smoothly in Gaborone’s Block 8 and Mogoditshane’s Nkoyaphiri clinics. So far, close to 700 men had already been circumcised using the new method since the start of the project.

The target was to circumcise 825 men at the end of the study. One hundred and eighty-five men were circumcised during the first phase of the pilot study.

Mr Ntsuape said it will be after the close of the second phase when the ministry will make an analysis with the final report coming out in November this year. He explained that the expectation is that the programme would roll-out to other parts of Botswana in January next year. ENDS