www.infochangeindia.org
Thursday, 15 March 2012

E-mail Print PDF

Study assesses Indian response to male circumcision

This small study carried out in Mysore found that 81% of mothers polled were agreeable to having their male children circumcised.

There is currently little information on the acceptability of male circumcision in India, a country where male circumcision is not a tradition in a majority of the population.

This study ‘Acceptability of male circumcision among mothers with male children in Mysore, India’, published in the journal Aids (May 11, 2008, Vol 22(8): pg 983-988 by Madhivanan, Purnima; Krupp, Karl; Chandrasekaran, Varalakshmi; Karat, Samuel C; Reingold, Arthur L; Klausner, Jeffrey D) is an attempt to investigate how acceptable circumcision is among Indian mothers with male children.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted among a convenience sample of 795 women attending a reproductive health clinic in Mysore, India, between January and April 2007.

Of the 1012 invited eligible participants, 795 women agreed to participate. A majority of the women were Hindus (78%), a community that does not traditionally circumcise male children. Eighteen per cent of the respondents were Muslims, and 4% were Christians. About 26% of respondents had no schooling, 29% had seven years of schooling, 42% had 8-12 years, and 3% had more than 12 years.

After the women were informed about the risks and benefits of male circumcision, a majority of them with uncircumcised children (81%) said they would definitely circumcise their children if the procedure was offered in a safe hospital setting, free of charge, and a smaller number (7%) said they would probably consider the procedure. Only seven women (1%) said that they would definitely/probably not consider male circumcision, and 63 (9%) were unsure.

The study concludes that since male circumcision has been found to decrease risk of HIV infection among men, it is important to determine its acceptability as a potential HIV prevention strategy in India. The study found that male circumcision was highly acceptable among a broad range of mothers with male children in Mysore. However, further studies of acceptability among fathers and other populations are warranted.
(Also see ‘Male circumcision: a cut above’)

InfoChange News & Features, May 2008




If you have a personal query that requires an answer, click here for our Helpline.

Comments
Add New Search
Write comment
   
Name:
Email:
 
Title:
UBBCode:
[b] [i] [u] [url] [quote] [code] [img] 
 
 
Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.
Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.26

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."