SIXTH CIRCUMCISION DEATH IN EASTERN CAPE.
Sixth circumcision death in Eastern Cape June 25, 2006, 17:15.
Circumcision season today claimed its sixth victim within a week in the
Eastern Cape, provincial health authorities said.
Sizwe Kupelo, a department spokesperson, says police were on their
way to pick up the body at an initiation school which was erected in the bush.
The age of the boy is not yet known.
The season, which starts when schools close in June and ends when
they reopen again, is notorious for claiming the lives of young
boys, with about 15 dying in 2005.
Yesterday a fifth boy's body was picked up at an initiation school.
"Young boys are dying like flies," Kupelo says, adding that 13 boys as
young as 13 years have been circumcised in the area of Libode.
He says the boys often die of infection, gangrene or sepsis.
He says the boys steal chickens from villages to pay the "surgeons" and
go to these schools where they stand in a queue to be circumcised.
"Our worry, is that apart from dying, there is a high possibility that
the boys would end up contracting HIV."
He says these bogus traditional surgeons have received no training.
They take a spear or a knife and move down the queue, cutting the first
boy to the last without sterilising or washing the instrument.
"If the first have HIV the rest will be infected...people don't realise
those consequences." He pleaded with the so-called traditional surgeons
to stop circumcising young boys without permission.
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