PARENTS should be encouraged to get their boys circumcised to reduce their risk of contracting HIV from a female partner later in life, experts say.

In what is expected to reignite the debate over circumcision, a group of Sydney specialists yesterday described the practice as "sound health policy" in an editorial in theMedical Journal of Australia.

"A wealth of research has shown that the foreskin is the entry point that allows HIV to infect men during intercourse with an infected female partner," they wrote.

"Soon after the HIV pandemic was first recognised, much lower HIV prevalence was found in areas of sub-Saharan Africa where more than 80 per cent of males had been circumcised."

Sydney physician Alex Wodak said encouraging parents to have their baby boys circumcised was "common sense", given that the proportion of new HIV cases in Australia associated with heterosexual sex was increasing.

But he told The Courier-Mail that the Royal Australasian College of Physicians on Friday had endorsed a policy which recommended against routine circumcision of boys, despite accepting the increasing evidence of health benefits.

He said the Medicare rebate had also been eroded so that the operation was unaffordable for low-income families.

Dr Wodak, of St Vincent's Hospital, called on governments to remove barriers to parents wanting their baby sons circumcised.

"All states and territories should allow this operation to be carried out in the public hospital system," he said.

"We should be trying nationally to get back to where we were in the 1950s and 60s where the majority of infant males were circumcised."

Despite official discouragement of the practice, Medicare statistics show a rise in the rate of infant male circumcision in Australia from 13 per cent in 1998 to 19 per cent last year.