SAFE MALE CIRCUMCISION STARTS IN KASESE MUNICIPALITY.

Kasese Municipality on Friday launched a safe male circumcision campaign as one of the ways of mitigating the prevalence of HIV/AIDS that is reportedly on the increase.
Mayor Godfrey Kabyanga said that the prevalence rate from the recent tests in Kasese Municipality alone stands at twenty six percent.
Kasese district alone is at 6.3 percent prevalence rates according to statistics in the health office.
He said that it is due to the influx of sex workers from neighboring districts who assemble on different streets every evening.
The safe male circumcision campaign in Kasese Municipality is being funded by the Alliance of Mayors and Municipal leader’s initiative for community Action on AIDS (AMMICAL).
The week long campaign is part of the one hundred fifty million shillings funding to Kasese Municipality by AMMICAL that will also help in the prevention of mother to child transition.
Opening the campaign officially, Rwenzururu King Charles Wesley Mumbere in a speech read for him by his transport minister Thembo Kitsumbire, acknowledged the importance of circumcision in the Bakonzo
and Bamba tradition.
The Omusinga observed that apart from being scientifically encouraged in the fight against HIV/AIDS, it is a custom in his Kingdom.
Among the Bakonzo and Bamba communities one cannot be regarded as a man unless he undergoes circumcision.
Mumbere encouraged the people of Kasese to impress safe male circumcision which he said needed to be handled carefully such that the practice do not spread the disease more instead of preventing it.
Kitsumbire in his own words challenged the people of Kasese to own and support the project if they are benefit from it.
Most of those circumcised on the first day of the campaign were children below school going age.
ENDS