Survey also shows fewer than half had a brit mila at the halachicly required age of eight days.
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICHbrit 88(photo credit: )
Almost a third of male immigrants from the former Soviet Union are uncircumcised, according to a survey by the Geocartography Institute commissioned by the Jerusalem AIDS Project.
The project encourages circumcision here and abroad to reduce the risk of AIDS/HIV transmission.
Of those who have undergone ritual circumcisions, 37.3 percent had the procedure here and 5% had it performed when they were over 50. One percent underwent circumcision while they were in the IDF.
Fewer than half had a brit mila at the halachicly required age of eight days.
The survey also found that 2.2% of women who immigrated from the FSU "didn't know" whether their partner was circumcised, and 72.8% of female partners of uncircumcised new immigrants would prefer that they don't undergo ritual circumcision.
Since 1990, when the major wave of immigration from the FSU began, half a million adult males have made aliya.
The Jerusalem AIDS Project said Monday that some 80,000 adult immigrants from the FSU and Ethiopia had undergone circumcision with a local anesthetic in a surgical theater.
Research carried out abroad shows incontrovertibly that circumcision reduces by 60% the risk of a man being infected with HIV by a female carrier. In many African countries with high HIV rates, men are lining up for circumcision, and Israel's experience in circumcising thousands of adult males has aroused interest in the UN and among African governments.
So far, 10% of all doctors in Swaziland, southern Africa, have been trained to circumcise adults by the "Abraham Campaign" run by the Jerusalem AIDS Project.
