19.11.2010 Circumcision Camp

The day had finally come that I was assigned to circumcision camp.
I was truly quite excited, since the advent of circumcision camps a few months ago when the province of Kwazulu-Natal had introduced mass circumcisions as a way to tackle reducing HIV transmission rates, local hospitals and clinics had been rapidly recruiting all the young lads of the area and turning them into 'men'.

Circumcisions are not traditionally performed, infact it has been out of vogue for more than 200 yrs since the legendary King Shaka had been ruler of the area. With HIV being rampant and incredible data from WHO that show circumcisions can reduce rates of transmission by up to 60%, it was an intervention that needed to be applied on a mass level.

Initially uptake was slow, but with the sanctioning of the local/tribal leaders, not just the parliament leaders, local people were convinced and now boys who are HIV negative queuing to be circumcised.

So there have been 'camps' set up in various areas around the province and I went to one in Hlabisa, a beautiful area of the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi game park, with soft rolling green hills and little huts dotted all over.
I set off from my hospital about 7am and got to the clinic about 8.30am, I was rearing to go but discovered that these things didn't usually start till about 10:30......so I watched, waited and mingled. The place was buzzing, with the matrons and nurses getting ready the feast for us workers.

The pile of food began trickling in, the boys were being labelled and counselled, more nurses were arriving in, the around 9am they all broke out in song - the morning prayers are usually sung in a local gospel form. Its very soulful and quite a beautiful site - everyone singing in pure harmony.

By around 10am had more or less all the bays set up and diathermy active and the cutting began. On the cutting side I was the representative guest from Mseleni hospital and we had the regional medical manager as well as Hlabisa's medical manager and some doctors from the local NGO - Africa Centre.

The procedure itself is relatively simple as long as you manage to cauterise or suture any bleeders thoroughly, it is literally a minor operation and patients walk in and out. The have to keep the dressing on for 3 days and maintain hygienic washing rules and abstain from intercourse for 6/52 as prior to that there is a higher risk of transmission.

We had finished up by 6 pm, had cut about 25 each and had two post op bleeders and one vaso-vagal. All-in-all not a bad days work. I was relieved to catch my ride back to Mseleni, which was still another 1.5hrs on cow infested road, i snoozed most of the way back. But unfortunately and unsurprisingly we met a toppled people carrier bus at the road side. It had tried to avoid kids on the road and swerved and toppled over. All the passengers had already been taken to Mseleni. It made me think yet again how lucky I was and how I didnt want to ever catch a bus in South Africa.