new york to promote circumcision.

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is planning a campaign to encourage men at high risk of AIDS to get circumcised in light of the World Health Organization’s endorsement of the procedure as an effective way to prevent the disease.While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is just beginning to convene meetings and design studies to help it formulate a national policy, New York City is moving ahead on its own.In the United States, “New York City remains the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, said in an interview. Referring to H.I.V., he said, “In some subpopulations, you have 10 to 20 percent prevalence rates, just as they do in parts of Africa.”His department has started asking some community groups and gay rights organizations to discuss circumcision with their members, and has asked the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs city hospitals and clinics, to perform the procedure free for men without health insurance.A spokeswoman, Ana Marengo, said the corporation was “having conversations” with the health department but had not reached a decision. “As you know, the research on this is pretty recent,” she said.In three recent clinical trials in Africa, circumcision was shown to lower a man’s risk of contracting the virus from heterosexual sex by about 60 percent. On March 28, the World Health Organization officially recommended that countries adopt the procedure as part of AIDS prevention plans.

The World Health Organization officially recommended circumcision as a way to prevent heterosexual transmission of the AIDS virus yesterday, setting the stage for donor agencies to begin paying for the operation.The group acted after three clinical trials in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa, overseen by the national health agencies of the United States and France, found that male circumcision reduced the risk of infection of men through heterosexual sex by about 60 percent.No countries have yet adopted circumcision as part of their AIDS prevention plans, “but I hope this recommendation will lead some to do so,” said Dr. Kevin De Cock, director of the H.I.V.-AIDS department of the World Health Organization.

Circumcision may provide even more protection against AIDS than was realized when two clinical trials in Africa were stopped two months ago because the results were so clear, according to studies being published today.The trials, in Kenya and Uganda, were stopped early by the National Institutes of Health, which was paying for them, because it was apparent that circumcision reduced a man's risk of contracting AIDS from heterosexual sex by about half. It would have been unethical to continue without offering circumcision to all 8,000 men in the trials, federal health officials said.That decision, announced on Dec. 13, made headlines around the world and led the two largest funds for fighting AIDS to say they would consider paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries. But the final data from the trials, to be published today in the British medical journal The Lancet, suggest that circumcision reduces a man's risk by as much as 65 percent.The December announcement described only the follow-up on the men as originally divided into two groups: those who agreed to be circumcised and those who agreed not to. But some in the first group never went to the circumcision clinic, and some in the second had private circumcisions before the study ended.Re-evaluating the data, excluding a few men whose H.I.V. status was misdiagnosed during the trial and combining the results of three trials -- those in Uganda and Kenya as well as one in South Africa that was stopped in 2005 when the protective effect became apparent -- produces a protection rate of about 65 percent.

His department has started asking some community groups and gay rights organizations to discuss circumcision with their members...