The knowledge that circumcision can play a key role in reducing the of AIDs is nothing new. Circumcision lowers the chances of contracting AIDs by 60%. It has been widely discussed in international conferences and various circumcision clinics have been set up. Still, anti circumcision ideologues prevent a major push. That is the reason I have been so delighted in seeing the story on South Africa's opposition to the life saving procedure make the Drudge report.

Who knows maybe the time for logical action has come? If so, it would be good news indeed. How good a news? Consider:

Failure to circumcise men 'may have cost millions of Aids deaths'

World Aids experts say the failure to act upon 25-year-old evidence that male circumcision plays a major role in preventing transmission of the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) may have cost"millions of lives", especially in Africa.

In 1985 researchers discovered that circumcised men who visited prostitutes in Kenya were much less likely to contract HIV. Some 30 studies on the issue were done during the 1990s, but it was not until 2004 that formal double-blind trials were commissioned by international Aids agencies. As a result of"overwhelming results" from these, pilot programmes for mass circumcision of men began in a number of African countries late last year.

It is now accepted by the World Health Organisation and other bodies that circumcision reduces chances of HIV infection by about 60%, and that up to 3 million deaths and 5.7 million infections could be prevented over the next 20 years. About 30 million people are thought to have died from Aids-related illnesses since 1981.

Dr Catherine Hankins, the chief scientific adviser to UNAids, the United Nations special agency for the epidemic, said that the failure to test the findings in the 1990s was"hard to explain".

"There's a good question to be asked of the research agencies: why they did not start the trials earlier," said Hankins. "We had 20 years of observational data on circumcision. I can't think of another product, or a technique, that waited for so long before trials." Circumcision has now been proved a very cost-effective way of reducing the rate of HIV infection, she said. . . .

Professor Francis Plummer, who led the University of Nairobi research team that first discovered the circumcision-HIV link in Kenya in the 1980s, said millions of lives might have been saved if his research had been acted upon sooner. . . . Halperin and Pisani agreed with Plummer's estimate that millions of lives could have been saved by earlier action.

Also see, Jewish ritual as AIDS prevention tool