20100119

LONDON (Reuters) - Circumcising newborn boys to stop them becoming infected with the AIDS virus in later life is more cost-effective than circumcising adult men, Rwandan health experts said on Tuesday.

A study by Agnes Binagwaho and colleagues at Rwanda's health ministry found that the operation, which has been shown to cut dramatically the virus' transmission from women to men, is quicker, simpler and more cost-effective in newborns.

The findings suggest "Rwanda should be simultaneously scaling up circumcision across a broad range of age groups, with high priority to the very young," Binagwaho wrote in the study in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine journal.

The researchers analysed the balance between the costs of medical intervention and its overall benefits. They found each newborn male circumcision would cost $15, while each adolescent or adult operation would cost $59.

They also found that circumcising male babies would ultimately save more money than it costs, because the operation would prevent HIV infections that are expensive to treat and lead to AIDS, which kills.

AIDS is caused by the incurable human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which is transmitted mostly through sex.

The disease has killed around 25 million people since it was identified in the early 1980s and an estimated 33 million people around the world are infected, most of them in Africa.

The penis foreskin, which is removed during circumcision, is rich in cells that are particularly easily infected.