News & Events

The rate of new HIV infections dropped by about 30 percent in three studies of intensive HIV interventions, but they did not achieve the larger reductions in incidence that had been expected, The New York Times reports. The studies, conducted in five African countries among almost 1.5 million people, assessed the impact of testing everyone in a community for HIV and providing... more

Linking men to HIV services is a major challenge, reports South Africa’s Times Live, citing the latest Global AIDS Update from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Times Live covered the release of the report in the Kwazulu-Natal town of Eshowe, where... more

Many parents in South Africa's Limpopo Province have lost faith in the traditional way of circumcising boys and are turning to voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC), Health-e News reports. Several parents who had taken their sons for VMMC cited concerns about the safety, hygiene, and cost of the traditional rite of passage. A general practitioner from a health centre in the village of... more

The Zambian government aims to circumcise 360,000 men and boys in 2019 as one of its interventions to reduce HIV infections, Zambian Eye reports. Speaking in Muchinga Province’s Chinsali District at the launch of an April campaign to promote voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC), the province’s assistant secretary said VMMC is a cost-effective HIV prevention intervention. He... more

Zimbabwe’s national voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) programme circumcised more than 326,000 men and boys last year, meeting 90 percent of its goal of 350,000 VMMCs for 2018, reports Zimbabwe Daily. The health ministry’s VMMC director reported this progress at a meeting held to review the country’s new two-year VMMC strategy. He noted that the VMMC programme, which reached... more

Providing door-to-door HIV testing and linkages to HIV care, treatment, and prevention services substantially reduced new HIV infections in a study involving more than 1 million people in Zambia and KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Aidsmap reports. The... more

Findings on the impact of antiretroviral therapy and voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) on the rate of new HIV infections in Western Kenya were examined in a themed discussion and a poster presentation at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Seattle, Washington, from 4–7 March 2019.... more

A systematic review of 81 peer-reviewed studies and abstracts, published 31 January 2019 in Frontiers in Public Health, provides evidence that male circumcision is a powerful tool to reduce women’s risk of cervical cancer and several sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The researchers... more

Voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) and an annual HIV test are the only regular health services recommended for men in Malawi, while women of childbearing age are advised to visit clinics dozens of times a year for family planning, maternal health, and other services, a study has... more

Despite circumcising 2 million men and boys since 2010, Uganda has fallen short of its goals for safe male circumcision (SMC), Global Press Journal reports. The country’s policy, adopted in 2010, aimed to provide SMC services to 4.2 million men and boys ages 15 to 49 by 2016. Ugandans working on SMC who are quoted in the article attribute the shortfall to misconceptions about the... more

Voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) is part of a national strategy to reduce the annual number of new HIV infections among adults in Kenya by 75 percent in 2019, Xinhua reports. A new report from the National AIDS Control Council describes how Kenya will use a combination... more

Two young men in Namibia are posting videos of their experiences with voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) as part of a social media campaign to encourage men to get circumcised, New Era Live reports. Using the hashtag #doitwithafriend and posting on Facebook and other platforms videos that will follow the men through the six-week healing period, the campaign will address some... more

A mobile clinic launched to increase access to voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) in Cape Town, South Africa, will be able to provide up to 40 male circumcisions a day, Times Live reports. A joint initiative of the Western Cape Department of Health and the nonprofit organisation Jhpiego, the mobile clinic will also provide screening for HIV and prostate cancer. Its launch was... more

The acceptability and uptake of voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) and its role in encouraging HIV testing were among the topics examined in five posters presented at the HIV Research for Prevention conference in Madrid from 21-25 October 2018. A schedule and links to the conference programme are available here.

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The US President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) supported the voluntary medical male circumcisions (VMMCs) of more than 15 million men and boys in 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa from 2007 to 2017, Aidsmap reports. The article, which summarises a paper published in BMJ Open, also cites a World Health Organization estimate that the 15,269,720 PEPFAR-... more