Thousands of men around the world are being sterilized on Friday for what organizers have called a global "vasectomy-athon," in an attempt to combat resistance to the procedure and to promote more male involvement in family planning, the AFP news agency reports.
To mark World Vasectomy Day, 3,000 volunteers across 25 countries, including the U.S., Australia, Spain and Indonesia, will receive discounted or free vasectomies from over 750 doctors.
The third annual World Vasectomy Day is being hosted by the Indonesian island of Bali this year and coincides with the International Conference on Family Planning that is also being held on the island.
Six men underwent the procedure on Friday morning in a temple on the island to kick off the event and the team organizing the day are taking mobile health clinics on a two-week tour around the archipelago nation to provide men with vasectomies.
"In helping to shoulder responsibility for family planning, men become heroes to their partners, to their families and to our future," Jonathan Stack, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who co-founded of event alongside urologist Dr Doug Stein in 2013, told AFP.
Stein, who has established vasectomy programs in the Philippines, Haiti, and Kenya, told AFP that the procedure has proved positive for men, their families and communities.
According to AFP, four in every 10 pregnancies worldwide are unplanned. Friday's event aims to highlight the fact that men need to play a greater role in family planning, which they say is all too often left to women.
The event also hopes to combat some of the religious opposition to vasectomies that is prevalent in some regions. In Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, vasectomies are forbidden under Islamic law, while earlier this year, Iran announced a plan to ban the procedure and other forms of birth control in order to boost the country's declining birth rate.
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