Infant boys in the U.S. are less likely to get circumcised now than in years past, but that leaves them vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections and may add billions of dollars to health-care costs, Johns Hopkins University researchers said.
About 55 percent of the 2 million males born each year in America are circumcised, a decrease from 79 percent in the 1980s, according to the report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The procedure, which removes the foreskin from the tip of the penis where bacteria and viruses accumulate, is linked to fewer cases of HIV, herpes, genital warts and genital cancers among men and their sexual partners.
Circumcision has gathered support from groups such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for use in Africa and other areas of the world where HIV is widespread as public health officials consider it one of the most effective ways to curb infection. It has gotten less attention in the U.S., where 18 state Medicare programs for the poor dropped coverage of the procedure and private insurers have followed, researchers said.
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