By Doug Stein
On a 2013 mission hosted by a vasectomy trainee from Kenya, I was performing vasectomies in the side room of a remote clinic in western Kenya. It was in an area dominated by the Luhya tribe and, encouraged by local educators, the men just kept coming, in contrast to our far less enthusiastic reception in Kisumu, an area dominated by the Luo tribe.
After about 20 vasectomies, I heard a crowd of voices in the open-air reception area outside our procedure room. I stepped out and there was a throng of men gathered in front of documentarian Jonathan Stack and our cameraman chanting, “We support World Vasectomy Day” in Swahili-accented English.
The expression was new to me and when things settled down, I asked Jonathan to explain. Seeing these men step up to share responsibility for family planning and relieve their partners of that burden impressed us both. But Jonathan wanted to turn that admiration into a celebration of these brave and loving men. He thought that there should be a special day to honor them and the doctors who make vasectomy easy for them.
Thus was born what would soon become the largest male oriented family planning event in history, a special movement to honor men who choose vasectomy as an act of love for their partners, their families, and our planet, and who thereby inspire others to do the same when their families are complete.
Sceptical at first, I soon considered it a genius idea. It started as a special day of thousands of vasectomies performed by hundreds of doctors around the world orchestrated by Jonathan via internet communication from a new headquarters each year – from Indonesia to Argentina, Australia to Zambia.
World Vasectomy Day now hosts doctor-training missions to countries unfamiliar with vasectomy, and quarterly webinars with worldwide audiences. It is the movement around which much of my professional and personal life is scheduled. And it all started with an idea inspired by a group of loving men in a remote rural clinic in the heart of Africa.
