Ministry of Health says Voluntary medical male circumcision ideal for Malawi in preventing sexually transmitted diseases and hygiene.

Spokesperson of Ministry of Health Henry Chimbali said this during the media training for Journalists on voluntary medical male circumcision in Lilongwe on Thursday.

Chimbali said that the Government and Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) thought it was important to conduct training for journalists on medical male circumcision ably to impart knowledge to the society.

“This training is very important as Journalists help in disseminating information to the public on different issues and will help to tell the masses the importance of male circumcision and the benefits of it to their Health and how they can work together with Health workers in addressing issues about the same,” said Chimbali.

He added that the training will also help review some of the approaches the Ministry and the Journalists have been using to reach people in their different places and how best to bring on board those seeing no reason to go for medical male circumcision.

On his part facilitator for the training who works for Centre for Disease control and prevention (CDC) Daniel Rutz said voluntary medical male circumcision is very important as it brings the science to the men in reducing HIV/AIDS transmission.

“Journalists are the only source of information for the people in the country as such they are trusted by the people so the need to train them to give relevant information to the people for them to make informed choices at the end,” said Rutz.

He further said he want to see positive outcomes about the issue so that many men can go for voluntary medical circumcision as circumcised men protect their spouse form cervical cancer.

He said that cervical cancer is transmitted by human papaloma virus (HPV).

Since the campaign started in 2011 around 180,000 men have gone for voluntary medical male circumcision in the country.