Forty boys killed in botched circumcisions in South Africa

Botched circumcisions in South Africa killed 40 boys and put over 100 in the hospital this month, a health official said. The boys, who were taken into rural areas and circumcised as part of traditional rites of passage, died from gangrene, dehydration and pneumonia, said Sizwe Kupelo, health department spokesman for Eastern Cape province. Mr Kupelo said practitioners of the rite are often not trained to carry out the procedure and can circumcise up to 50 boys with the same knife without sterilising it in between. "In some cases boys were not circumcised but mutilated," he said. "They use herbs to clean, hence this thing becomes gangrenous and infected," he said. Mr Kupelo said that the tradition was being exploited by young men in the eastern region of the province, rather than elders who should carry out the procedure. Boys die every year from botched circumcisions by ill-trained traditional surgeons in rural areas. Last year in the Eastern Cape, 91 boys died from complications of circumcisions, 55 of them in June, when the winter initiation season is at its height.