Male Circumcision

 

If lawyers have pro bono legal counsel, medical doctors have medical mission and free circumcision as a way to give back to the community. This is an opportunity for doctors in the Philippines to do professional work voluntarily without payment. This public service is often organized during the end of the academic year or end of March when the kids are on school holiday. This year, in partnership with Gawad Kalinga, University of Negros Occidental Recoletos and Ngee Ann Polytechnic-Singapore, we had a successful summer circumcision in Bacolod.

 

Male circumcision is the cutting of some parts of foreskin or the removal of the prepuce from the penis. In the country, we often give options of either German cut or American cut. Filipinos (both Catholics and Muslim Pinoys), South Koreans, Americans and Singaporean (particularly the Malay-Muslim) are often circumcised. For some, circumcision is practice because of tradition or belief, some claim it for medical reason (although medical journals can prove either cases), and the rest is that because their friends are circumcised, so they too want to be circumcised and not be left behind and be teased.

The truth is, most of my friends in medical school didn't learn how to circumcised in the labs or in classrooms. We learned it by joining medical missions organized by our school or  by other social civic organizations.

The procedure, on the average takes about 30 minutes from preparation, local anesthesia, cutting and suturing. For private patients, in can be done in the comfort of their parent's room, in the clinics or in the hospitals. For some of the family's who cannot afford to send their son on this right of passage to manhood, often, waiting for doctors to come to their remote villages for free circumcision is the answer they been waiting for.