MEN PROTEST AGAINST CIRCUMCISION RAPE

By Namo Phiri

THE Zambia National Men’s Network for Gender and Development has called on the Ministry of Health and other relevant authorities to ensure that the nurse who allegedly infected a 33-year-old man of Lusaka gets fired.

Commenting on the case where a 33-year-old male of Lusaka is reported to have been infected with STIs by a nurse at Kanyama West clinic after he was lured into having sexual intercourse when he went for circumcision, organisation National Coordinator Nelson Banda said such an act was not only unprofessional, but also unethical, coming from a person who was entrusted with people’s lives.

Mr. Banda called on the Ministry of Health and other professional bodies to take an interest in the case because he had not seen much being done thus far.

“We have not seen much talk and interest about this issue from different organizations, which was going to be the case if a woman was the one who was the victim,” Mr. Banda said.

And Mr. Banda called on men to normalize reporting GBV cases against them to relevant offices.

He said this was because such cases were common among men who mostly chose to keep quiet for fear of being misjudged and laughed at by society adding that oftentimes, men survived abuse but chose to keep quiet because of the way society perceived them.

He said there was a need for a change of mindset among men in the way they approached and handled Gender Based Violence (GBV) issues.

In the case of the 34-year-old man, Mr Banda said it was unfortunate that the man only chose to come out after realizing that he had been infected with an STI.

“There is a huge possibility that the man had thought of reporting the incident to the police but because of the way society perceives men, this man was discouraged,” he said.

He said there was so much that needed to be done if both male and female survivors of GBV were to be looked at the same as survivors. He said this was so because society had put prominence on women when it came to issues of GBV which was unfortunate.

He demanded that the Ministry of Health must fire the nurse who took advantage of the male patient saying there was a huge possibility that the man in question was not the first survivor.