Botched circumcisions performed during traditional initiation rites have killed 40 boys and put more than 100 in hospital this month, a health official said on Wednesday.
The boys, who were taken into the bush and circumcised as part of traditional rites of passage, died from gangrene, dehydration and pneumonia, said Sizwe Kupelo, health department spokesperson for Eastern Cape.
Boys die every year from botched circumcisions by ill-trained traditional surgeons in rural areas. Last year in the Eastern Cape, 91 boys died from complications of circumcisions, 55 of them in June, when the winter initiation season is at its height.
Kupelo said practitioners of the rite circumcise up to 50 boys with the same knife without sterilising it in between.
“They use herbs to clean, hence this thing becomes gangrenous and infected,” he said
He said some practitioners also botched circumcisions because of a lack of training.
“In some cases boys were not circumcised but mutilated,” he said.
Latest death
The latest death occurred on Tuesday in the town of Tsolo, where a 19-year-old initiate died shortly after being admitted to hospital.
Kupelo said the problem is not the tradition itself but the way it was being practised in the eastern region of the province.
“In that area there are no elders involved, it’s only youths that are running with this thing,” he said.
“There’s also an element of commercialising this whole thing. There are no seasoned and experienced traditional surgeons. Everybody’s just doing it for profit purposes and there’s no proper coordination.”
The death toll prompted traditional leaders to declare a moratorium on circumcisions in parts of the province earlier this month.
Kupelo said health authorities have been visiting initiation schools to treat the boys’ wounds and take them to hospital if needed. — AFP