My Foreskin Dried Up And Fell Off, Yay!

An HIV prevention strategy in Rwanda has a circumcision campaign aiming to target two million men in the next two years.

A new device called PrePex is the latest innovation and it works by a “special elastic mechanism that fits closely around an inner ring, trapping the foreskin, which dries up and is removed after a week.”

It’s non-surgical, requires no anesthetic, is cheaper, the man can be back at work within hours rather than days, and looks to be a great new innovation to help push this campaign along.

This device has not yet been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), but it was endorsed by the European Union. Rwandan authorities are hoping this will be approved shortly for wide-scale use.

This seems like a great device and I hope it gets approval because it would certainly be useful in places without access to sterile environments or with enough doctors to perform surgeries.

I do worry that the circumcision campaigns are too aggressive and that people might not realize they are still at risk of HIV and other infections — condoms are the only real method of prevention.

But if these programs contain ”counselling and testing, promotion of safer sex, treatment of sexually transmitted infections and condom use” as they are designed to, then this could be a great way of reducing HIV infection in Africa.

Contact the author here: mack@morningquickie.com