City kept mum on risks of controversial circumcision ritual

CITY HEALTH officials had known about the dangers of a controversial circumcision ritual since 1999 but did practically nothing to publicly warn unsuspecting Jewish parents until a baby died six years later, records show.

The first case of a baby becoming sick due to the ultra-Orthodox practice of a mohel sucking the blood from an infant’s newly circumcised penis — a ritual known as metzizah b’peh — surfaced after a concerned physician voluntarily reached out to the city Health Department during Rudy Giuliani’s administration.

At the time, there was no requirement for doctors to report all cases of neonatal herpes.

But more cases continued to pop up — six in total — and concerned doctors voluntarily contacted the Health Department for guidance.

It wasn’t until after one baby died in 2005 that city health officials decided to issue a public alert and begin to notify Jewish parents about the risks.

Health officials say they reached out to community leaders and recommended against the practice. But nothing was ever publicly disclosed, records show.

Health alerts were not started until sometime after 9/11, according to Health Department spokesman Chris Miller.

“You’re talking about two decades and two administrations ago — the fax machine was still a dominant communication device,” Miller said.

“That said, we were in communication with community leadership — the primary communication source for many people in this insular community.”

As for the cases in the late 1990s, both were associated with one mohel — typically a rabbi or doctor who does circumcisions — who performed the oral suction ritual.

The unnamed mohel promised to stop conducting the ceremonial rite, according to health officials. But the department never cautioned other mohels or parents about the health hazards tied to the centuries-old tradition.

The health commissioner at that time, Dr. Neal Cohen, did not respond to a call seeking comment.

The first “Health Alert” to doctors and the public was issued in 2005 when Michael Bloomberg was mayor. That was launched after a baby circumcised by Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer died, and two others became ill.

Health officials also required Jewish parents to sign a consent form detailing the dangers. But the policy was challenged in court by Jewish leaders who argued it violated their religious rights, and it was largely ignored.

As a result, Mayor de Blasio repealed the requirement as part of a deal with community leaders in 2015. But since the change, six babies have developed herpes after undergoing the ritual, it was revealed earlier this month. And in four of those cases, community leaders failed to help health officials identify the mohels.

More recently, Health Department officials have struggled to educate Jewish parents about the dangers, according to internal documents obtained by the Daily News via a Freedom of Information Law request.

Only one of the 13 hospitals city health staffers visited in 2015 was aware of a new city-published brochure detailing the potential danger of the practice.

A Health Department spokesman defended the city’s efforts to educate Jewish families. “We identified issues and corrected them,” Miller said. “That’s part of our job.”

That included distributing nearly 2,000 brochures to hospitals and doctors, he added.

But at the same time, the Health Department suddenly stopped issuing a citywide health alert each time a new bris-induced herpes case was reported. Asked why they stopped, a high-ranking Health Department staffer said last week there was so much attention given to the issue that officials felt doctors were already aware of the disease. Moving forward, those alerts will once again be issued, the official said.