A study in Uganda has come up with a surprising finding about sex and HIV. Washing the penis minutes after sex increased the risk of acquiring HIV in uncircumcised men.

The sooner the washing, the greater the risk of becoming infected, the study found. Delaying washing for at least 10 minutes after sex significantly lowered the risk of HIV infection, Dr. Fredrick E. Makumbi reported on July 25 at an International AIDS Society Conference in Sydney, Australia.

The researchers do not have a precise explanation for the findings, which challenge common wisdom and the teaching of many infectious disease experts who urge penile cleansing as part of good genital hygiene. Health experts have suggested that washing the penis after sex could prevent potentially infectious vaginal secretions from entering the body through the uncircumcised penis.

Washing the penis after sex is common in Africa. To determine whether washing could be recommended as an alternative to male circumcision, Makumbi’s team from the Makerere University Institute of Public Health studied 2,552 uncircumcised men in the Rakai district of Uganda.

The men, ages 15 to 49, were uncircumcised and not HIV infected when they enrolled. Eighty-three percent said they washed with all sex partners.

The researchers asked about when and how the men washed after intercourse at enrollment and 6, 12 and 24 months later, including whether they washed with or without clothes.

Because of a slip-up, the researchers did not ask details of how the cleansing was done or directly about using soap, said Dr. Ronald H. Gray, a co-author from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Some soaps used in Africa are more irritating than those used elsewhere.

Men who washed within three minutes had a 2.3 percent risk of HIV infection compared with 0.4 percent among those who delayed washing for 10 or more minutes. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases paid for the study.

The washing analysis was a secondary part of a study undertaken to determine the effectiveness of male circumcision against HIV infection. Earlier reports had shown that circumcision was protective.

One message from the study, Gray said, “is that there ought to be a little time left for postcoital cuddling before you go and wash. Don’t just finish and jump out of bed.”

Makumbi and other AIDS experts said they did not know why the washing practice increased vulnerability to HIV infection, but offered various explanations. One is that the acidity of vaginal secretions may impair the ability of the AIDS virus to survive on the penis. Delayed cleansing — and longer exposure to the vaginal secretions — may then reduce viral infectivity.

Another is that use of water, which has a neutral pH, may encourage viral survival and possible infectivity.

HIV apparently needs to be in a fluid to cross the mucosa to infect cells, Gray said. If the HIV-contaminated fluid dries, its infectivity may decrease. Adding water could resuspend HIV to make it more infectious.

The study findings are counterintuitive, said Dr. Merle A. Sande, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Washington in Seattle, and “show why you have to do the studies, because until you do them, you just don’t know.”

Sande, who was not involved in the study, said, “There is still so much we don’t understand about the complex factors that influence HIV transmission in the genital tract, but this important study will help.”

He also is president of the Academic Alliance Foundation, a group that trains health workers to treat AIDS and other infectious diseases in Uganda.
By NewYork Times News Service

Recently, America’s TV girl, Oprah Winfrey, called on America to sever diplomatic relationships with world’s topmost corrupt countries.

Worst of all the countries, Oprah surmised, is Nigeria.

According to her, “all Nigerians – regardless of their level of education – are corrupt.”

It is very pathetic that Oprah could ascribe to a larger population, the evil act of an insignificant number of persons in the world’s most populous black nation.

Oprah’s conclusion is based on the fact that a Nigerian of Igbo extraction was caught with $500,000, which was alleged to have been stolen from a foreigner through the Internet fraud popularly known as 419.

Oprah had sponsored an hour-long programme, which ran for several days on the CNN, with the sole aim of exposing the clever tricks espoused by this group of Nigerians to con their victims.

Much has been said about the greed of the victims themselves, and I need not say more about it.

However, at a time when Americans are committing heinous crimes against children and women, nobody has tagged all Americans as murderous.

So, why call all Nigerians rogues because of the sin of a few bad eggs?

Oprah regularly tells her life story: how she was sexually abused by close relations, how she ‘walked the streets’ (Americans’ euphemism for prostitution), etc., but nobody has ever deemed it fit to tag all American men as incestuous because of Oprah and others’ experiences.

She did drugs – just like the typical American teenager, but nobody has cast all American youths in the mould of drug abusers!

So, why should an individual that is supposed to know better sentence a nation to odium for the infraction of a tiny fraction of its population?

I urge Oprah and her likes to disabuse their minds about Nigerians.

Be wary of requests for money from strangers, and if you fall for a scam, blame your greed and not Nigerians.

Okoli Vitalis,

legendchyke@gmail.com

Disturbed by the distraction provocative dresses have become for university staff and students, many tertiary institutions have enacted urgent dress codes to curb the problem and limit the damage to the self esteem of everyone on the campus. The University of Ibadan (UI) is the latest to join the codification of dresses on campus. UI, said the report, has banned female students from wearing perforated and transparent clothes, low-neck blouses that expose breast, armpit and belly-button and tight skirts that reveal, in all its aggravating posture, the structure of the buttocks. No skirt that does not reach the knee, said the regulation, could be worn. Male students were similarly, but not acutely, affected. In general, the dress code expects them to remain men, not hybrids or dandies piercing ears and plaiting hair.

There are no reports to tell us how universities, which have enacted dress codes for their students, have fared. We do not know how well the schools have enforced the codes or for how long. We also have no inkling into what motivated the authorities to draw up the codes. Did offended students complain about the dresses? Were teachers distracted from doing their job or conducting research? Did the provocative dresses engender cultism and affect standards negatively? And have the sociology departments in these schools researched the reasons female students flaunt what materialists call their assets?

It seems that the dress codes were a product of general feelings rather than deep-rooted research. Everyone appears to feel horrified in a vague sense and expresses it without knowing concretely why. And the authorities also play along with the horrified university public by surrendering to the same paranoia. The reasons often given for cracking down on outrageous dresses, some analysts volunteer, are basically connected with religion, ethics and culture. Religion, because they say the dresses offend God and morality; ethics, because they say the dresses are depraved; and cultural, because the dresses are at war with our traditions and values.

The dress codes have, however, not diminished the outlandish and obscene taste for the unusual. A cursory inspection of many institutions show clearly the tenacious hold female students have on expressionist fashion where both what is hidden and what is exposed speak loudly to the viewer’s fantasies. And judging from the wording of the dress codes themselves, the authors seem to have excellent and sharp eyes for anatomising both the dresses and the dressed. The war over indecent dresses on campuses obviously cannot be won at the level of imposing codes, in spite of their engaging simplicity, and enforcing them. Have the university authorities never heard of moral suasion? Can’t they try to reason these things out with the students and persuade them to opt for change?

Do not be hasty in these three: Marriage, Business and Travel"
Do not waste these three: Time, Money, Energy"
Like these three: Kindness, Sympathy and Cordiality"
Hate these three: Injustice, Pride and Unfaithfulness "
Love these three: Bravery, Gentility and Affection "
Leave these three: Laziness, Too much talk, Hurried Judgment "
Value these three: Intelligence, Ability and Happiness " Control these three: Temper, Desire and Tongue "
Preserve these three: Good books (scriptures) Good deeds and Good Friends.

Former Ghanaian President, Mr. Jerry Rawlings, has said that culture of democracy is being undermined in Africa, saying that electoral processes are fast losing their integrity in the continent.

He added that democracy was being undermined by the unipolar situation, immorality in international politics and unethical business practices.

The ex-President further said that legislative checks, which were mearnt to strengthen the system of governance, were found wanting in Africa.

He said, “As far as I am concerned, I think the culture of democracy in Africa is being undermined by the unipolar situation, by the immorality in international politics and the unethical business practices that are going on.”

Rawlings also urged African leaders to imbibe what was obtainable in the Western world where the parliaments, congresses and civil societies had the power to correct any perceived abnormality in the system.

He said, “The Western powers and a lot of these European powers have what I call the “handbrake”.

Their parliaments, their congresses and their civil societies have the capacity to pull the hand brake, to prevent their vehicle from reversing.

“South America has demonstrated to an extent its electoral integrity, but not in Africa.

“So what do we have? We have a situation where we do not want military coups but at the same time electoral processes are seriously loosing their integrity.”