Misconception on circumcision

MBABANE – “We have found that a lot of men who have sexually transmitted infections (STI) assume that circumcision will help them heal.”

This was highlighted by Vusi Maziya, the Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) National Co-ordinator, who said the process of screening before the circumcision process helped in identifying sexually transmitted diseases in men.

He said part of their research had also shown that most men avoided going to hospital, which had also contributed to the low circumcision numbers. This, he said, during the second day of the VVMC media workshop which was held at Happy Valley Hotel yesterday.

“Most men have the fear of the unknown and always have that question of what if something happens which contributes to why some do not go to the hospital to check for STIs.

“Some of them only discover that they have an STI when they go for circumcision,” said Maziya.

In her presentation, Senior VMMC Nurse Samkelisiwe Simelane announced that nurses would now be trained to perform circumcision procedures. She said all along, only doctors performed the procedures, but this did not mean that the doctors would stop performing them. Simelane said this was done to assist in covering more ground as there were more nurses than doctors in the health sector in Eswatini.

Injection

“Our role as nurses had solely been to assist during the procedure, which included the injection, dressing and cleaning of the wound among other things. We also do post operation care where we assess and monitor the healing process to check for bleeding and if the person is not facing difficulty when it comes to urinating,” she said.

Simelane said follow-up visits were very important to advise the patients on the wound healing process, including not engaging in sexual intercourse for a period of six weeks.

One of the issues that were raised in response to the fact that nurses would be involved in the circumcision process was that most people were of the view that nurses were rude at times and did not practise patient confidentiality.

It was highlighted that most men were secretive and did not appreciate it when a nurse publicly mentioned the reasons why they were at the hospital.

“We acknowledge that some nurses may be rude to patients and men especially will not tolerate that, which is the reason we believe we need to work on ways to improve. This also contributes to the fact that men in general do not like going to the hospital, the fact that they have to be injected in their manhood is also a struggle for them,” said Simelane.

She said there were currently 15 sites in Eswatini that offered the service of circumcision procedures adding that different sites in other parts of the country offered a different setup.

This contributed to the comfort and general experience which included privacy among others which were some of the issues that they were working towards addressing.