It's About the People: Tanzania's VMMC Program Gets It Right

The world has an unprecedented opportunity to prevent an estimated three and a half million new HIV infections between now and 2025 by scaling up voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC), changing the course of the epidemic in countries in Eastern and Southern Africa with the highest HIV prevalence. Rapid scale-up of sound, evidence-based HIV prevention strategies is imperative.

VMMC reduces the risk of female-to-male HIV transmission by 60% and provides lifelong partial protection from HIV acquisition and a number of sexually transmitted diseases and their consequences. VMMC services involve a package of prevention services including HIV testing, risk reduction counseling, STI screening and male circumcision. In 2007, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS issued recommendations to scale up medical male circumcision in 14 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa with high prevalence of HIV and low levels of male circumcision. While progress has been made in a number of these countries, more must be done and much more rapidly to reap the HIV prevention benefits.

One of the more successful efforts to roll out and scale up VMMC for HIV prevention has been in Tanzania, where more than one million men have been circumcised in the past four years. The country is well on its way to meeting its targets and averting thousands of future HIV infections.
To illustrate Tanzania's good practices and to inspire other countries to accelerate scale up of VMMC, PEPFAR, through USAID, funded and developed in partnership with MCHIP, an 11-minute video highlighting the VMMC program in the Iringa and Njombe regions of Tanzania. The film demonstrates that despite many challenges, it is possible to implement a high-volume quality program in populations with low levels of male circumcision and high HIV prevalence. The film is empowering and inspirational, illustrating how millions of lives can be saved through a simple biomedical intervention. By showcasing a successful program—as told through the voices of clients, providers and government officials—the video gives viewers an overview of the “ingredients” that the Government of Tanzania and other countries have used to ensure the program reaches and serves as many individuals as possible. While each country's context is unique, and other countries face their own set of barriers to scale-up of VMMC, the video can be used to stimulate discussion among key stakeholders and opinion leaders in the other countries about their own country context and the elements needed to accelerate scale-up of VMMC in their countries.