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HIV/AIDS News South Africa

Traditional post-circumcision sexual coercion puts Kenya's youth at risk

Sexual peer pressure is forcing many newly circumcised young men in central Kenya to engage in sex before they are fully healed, negating the procedure's protective effects against HIV, according to the preliminary findings of an ongoing regional study.

"The research in Maragua and Murang'a districts shows that boys who undergo circumcision are encouraged by older boys to approach girls for sex to prove their manhood, a practice known as 'kwihura mbiro' or wiping the soot," Dr Anne Kamau, study author and research associate at the University of Nairobi, told a recent HIV research conference in the western Kenyan city of Kisumu.

Studies in Kenya and Uganda have shown that circumcision can reduce the chances of men contracting the HI virus by as much as 60 percent.

Read the full article here http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=73279

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