Last Thursday, I went into "the field" to Jinja with Isaac and Shira to do some groundwork for the hub transport system Shira has been working on. It was a pretty eye-opening visit in that it challenged many of the assumptions that had been made in setting up the project and showed just how necessary it is for us to spend time getting to know exactly what the issues are that we want to address.
However, I think the most interesting takeaway of the day was from a clinic we visited on our way home. When we drove up, we saw the clinic was mostly shut down for a circumcision drive. The truck pictured below had been brought into the lot and a tent was set up next to it. The tent was completely full of grown men waiting to be circumcised.
I remember reading about studies like this one showing that circumcision could reduce the female-to-male HIV transmission rate during intercourse by 60%, but I hadn't realized how much circumcision had caught on in Uganda and other parts of Africa. Talking to some Ugandans in the office, they said that they knew many people here who had recently gotten circumcised. They also mentioned that there was a growing fear that circumcised males would stop using condoms because of their decreased risk and that the net benefit of circumcision drives could be negative. There's still a lot more research to be done on that, but it was pretty impressive to see so many people making an active effort to reduce their risk.
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