The boy, Bruno Angel, says in his lawsuit filed on May 24 that IDI staff forced him to be circumcised while he was a student at Kalangala Primary School, some time between June 15 and June 23, 2017.
"The said servants of the defendant at their own initiative assumed a duty of circumcising the plaintiff without any consent and knowledge of his parents," the lawsuit reads.
He was allegedly lied to by the health care workers. "The plaintiff informed the said servants that his parents were not in support of their action but argued that they were executing government orders to circumcise the male children," the suit says. He also asserts that he was told not to mention the procedure to his parents and that IDI staff tried to bribe him with juice and biscuits.
Worse yet, Angel says that he's had permanent injuries and agonizing pain since, and that IDI did not treat his injury despite several pleas.
His family didn't find out about the procedure until the boy was left immobilized by his untreated injuries. "The plaintiff's parents came to know about the said un-consented (sic) circumcision when he could no longer move due to severe bleeding, swelling of testicles and penis, too much pain and pus flowing out of his penis," the lawsuit says, according to the Daily Monitor's Uganda outlet.
Angel is looking for compensation over the facility's failure to treat him, which he says resulted in severe pain, torture and financial loss.
IDI was created in 2002 to combat infectious diseases in Africa. It has worked with a number of US organizations and agencies including United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is a not-for-profit, which means that some of its employees benefit from money made by the organization.
Since 2011, the organization has circumcised 264,402 men and boys in Uganda, according to the IDI's 2017 annual report. Circumcision is believed to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted infections and urinary tract infections in men.
