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Blessings Chidakwa Midlands Bureau
A total of 775 men from the once secretive VaRemba tribe of Mberengwa in the Midlands province were circumcised, this time with help from trained nurses from the Ministry of Health and Child Care. Once every year, men from the VaRemba tribe retreat to the bush for a circumcision ceremony, which is normally conducted under secretive conditions. Zimbabwe Association of Church Related Hospitals (ZACH) programmes manager, Dr Joseph Hove, yesterday applauded VaRemba for taking a bold step in joining hands with relevant stakeholders to the conduct circumcision.

“We are happy that for the first time, the VaRemba people decided to rope in officials from the Ministry of Health and Child Care, as well as officials from National Aids Council (NAC) to conduct circumcision on their members, We applaud this bold step from this once secretive community as they also take into cognizant that there is risk of contracting HIV when this is not done properly.” he said. Dr Hove said his organisation started engaging the VaRemba community on the need to rope in experts when conducting circumcision since 2013.

“Our efforts were not successful until this year when they embraced the idea and with the help of officials from the health ministry and NAC, they managed to circumcise a record 775 people this time around,” he said. Dr Hove said ZACH would continue working VaRemba without clashing with their cultural practices, as long as they complied with the Ministry of Health’s ways of doing things.

“We hope to continuously build this relationship which we have started with them, but we will not interfere with their cultural practices, NAC official Mr Takawira Moyo said apart from assisting the VaRemba community in the circumcision, they also assisted with food hampers to those who were circumcised. Remember, these people camp in the bush for close to a month and what we did as NAC was to donate food hampers to the participants,” he said.