Clamp may prevent African circumcision deaths: concern mounts over rising death toll

JOHANNESBURG - South African officials plan to show traditional practitioners gory video footage of botched surgery as concern mounts over a rising death toll from commonplace tribal circumcision rituals.

Health experts recently visited Malaysia as part of a global search for ways to stem the level of male circumcision-related fatalities.

Meanwhile, leaders of the large Xhosa tribe--to which former President Nelson Mandela belongs--have approved use of a tiny clamp, invented and popularized in Malaysia, which has gained a reputation for preventing potentially lethal bleeding in circumcision rituals.

Doctors have approached traditional leaders to monitor trial use of the disposable device, called a Tara Klamp, after a year of error- riddled circumcision ceremonies. Ten boys died while undergoing traditional Xhosa rites of passage during mid-1999. A year-end circumcision season has been blamed for the deaths of four more boys, with 97 others hospitalized. In South African tribes, the procedure generally takes...