Swaziland's King Mswati urges men to get circumcised to prevent HIV infection

Swaziland's King Mswati III on Friday called on men in the kingdom to get circumcised to help reduce their risk of contracting HIV, Agence France-Presse reports. "Urging his nation to 'take care of your lives - stay away from activities that could give you the disease,' the king struck a very different note from his pronouncement to parliament a decade ago that HIV-positive people should be 'branded and sterilized,'" the news agency writes.

A U.S.-supported, nationwide circumcision campaign aims to circumcise 80 percent of men ages 14 to 49 within one year "to avert 90,000 new infections and save the health system millions of dollars over the next decade," AFP notes (7/15).