Jhpiego supported more than a million voluntary medical male circumcisions

More than 1 million men and youth in sub-Saharan Africa have chosen to protect themselves and reduce their risk of contracting HIV by participating in Jhpiego-supported voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) programs. This is a significant milestone that contributed to the U.S. government's goal of providing 4.7 million men access to this safe and effective procedure that reduces transmission of HIV by December 2013.

The medical male circumcisions were part of comprehensive HIV-prevention strategies implemented by the governments of 11 East and Southern African countries in partnership with and support from the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief through the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Defense HIV/AIDS Prevention Program. The commitment of these U.S. Government agencies, in cooperation with ministries of health and defense force health systems, made possible this singular achievement in the ongoing battle to curtail the spread of HIV and help engender an AIDS-free generation in Africa.

Jhpiego, a non-profit global health affiliate of Johns Hopkins University, provided the technical assistance, innovative approaches and policy guidelines to develop and deliver safe, effective and efficient VMMC services in which nurses played a leading role in assisting in and performing the surgical procedure, an approach designed to build the capacity of African health care workers to provide this needed intervention. The results of randomized trials show that VMMC reduces female-to-male HIV transmission by approximately 60 percent and modeling studies suggest that rapidly scaling up VMMC to reach 80 percent of reproductive age men could avert an estimated 3.4 million new HIV infections.