(webinar) Meeting Adolescents’ Needs: Findings from a Three-Country VMMC Assessment

Please join HC3 on Thursday, May 4 at 8am EDT (Washington DC) to learn about the findings from a three-country Adolescent VMMC (Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision) Assessment. The goal of the study was to gain a better understanding of whether VMMC programs are adequately meeting adolescent needs in age-appropriate ways by exploring counseling, communication and client-provider interaction. Cross-country comparisons will be shared from Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa. The findings have implications for all countries working in the VMMC arena as well as in adolescent sexual and reproductive health programming.

About the assessment’s principal investigator, who will present:

Aaron Tobian, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Pathology, Medicine and Epidemiology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is also an Associate Director of Transfusion Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Investigator with the Rakai Heath Sciences Program in Uganda.

Dr. Tobian has an established global research program that studies male circumcision, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Tobian has lived or worked in five developing countries. In collaboration with the Rakai Health Sciences Program, Dr. Tobian has demonstrated that male circumcision reduces the risk of herpes simplex virus type-2 (HSV-2), high-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) and proinflammatory anaerobes in the penile microbiome in heterosexual men, and has proven that male circumcision also has direct benefits for female partners. Dr. Tobian has authored more than 140 peer-reviewed articles in journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet and Clinical Infectious Diseases. His work has also been featured on the NBC Today Show, BBC World Service, National Public Radio, USA Today and other media outlets.

The webinar will be moderated by Kim Seifert-Ahanda, MPH, Senior Social and Behavior Change Advisor for USAID’s Office of HIV/AIDS.

http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?e=e01560f11f&u=d6b57750c5&id=ba576c8a71

Zimbabwe mixes medicine and tradition for safer circumcision

Bhekisisa, 05 July 2016

Zimbabwe has successfully won the support of chiefs and their people by combining a respect for tradition with safe, modern procedures.

As the winter school holidays in Zimbabwe approach, excitement and nervous apprehension is building up among teenage boys. They are preparing for a traditional, yet very modern, experience and they’ll be emulating their favourite DJs and celebrities.

Their friends will think they are smart and mature; their headmasters, teachers and parents will be impressed — as will be, remarkably, the chiefs.

In an exceptional coming together of tradition deeply rooted in social customs on the one hand and modern medicine on the other, hundreds of boys will be circumcised. They will head to initiation camps in the bush. There the elders will teach them about traditional values, customs and practices. They will learn what it means to be a responsible man in society: taking good care of a family, protecting women and wives, and valuing traditions and culture.

The foreskins of the initiates will be removed — but it will not be done by traditional circumcisers. Doctors and nurses will perform the procedure surgically.

Integrating medical male circumcision and traditional initiation is complicated. In South Africa, where the initiation season is in full swing, there has been a varied response. In Pondoland in the Eastern Cape, for example, there has been strong resistance to surgical intervention.

But the Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) programme in Zimbabwe has been so successful that nearly 600 000 adolescent and adult men have been medically circumcised since it was started in 2009. This is about 50% of the national target to be reached by 2017.

More than two-thirds (70%) of the initiates are adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 years. Although the programme is targeting males between the ages of 13 to 29 years, boys seem to respond more favourably to campaigns using role models and peer influence.

Read the full article here…

New progress in voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC)

12 July, 2016 – In the lead-up to the AIDS 2016 conference, WHO issued a new progress brief on country efforts to scale up voluntary medical male circumcision for HIV prevention. The brief shows that 11.7 million men stepped up for circumcision as a prevention option by the end of 2015, demonstrating this public health surgical intervention is feasible and can be successful in target countries. The progress contributes to 335,000 HIV infections averted through 2025.

 

Read the full brief here