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Photo source: MCHIP
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Launched this week, a new PLOS collection provides evidence from five African countries that safe, high quality voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) services performed by trained healthcare professionals in low-resource settings can be implemented and sustained at scale. The new collection, Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision for HIV Prevention: Improving Quality, Efficiency, Cost Effectiveness, and Demand for Services during an Accelerated Scale-Up, documents the application of preliminary findings into a program that aims to circumcise 20.3 million boys and men in 14 priority countries. Estimates from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2011 demonstrate that if these targets are achieved by 2016, it is possible that 3.4 million new HIV infections will be prevented, saving the lives of thousands of men, women and children and averting over $16 billion in medical treatment costs over 15 years.
The papers, published under the PLOS Collection, summarize many of the lessons learned during the accelerated scale-up of VMMC at a time when several countries have moved to high volume VMMC services. As the findings point out, providing VMMC services offers a unique opportunity to reach men as never before, and often for the first time in their lives, with critical sexual and reproductive health services and to link them with HIV care and treatment when necessary.
This collection of research studies is featured in the leading open access medical journals PLOS ONE and PLOS Medicine and was funded by PEPFAR and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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