Voluntary medical male circumcision

Reaching the 2030 HIV incidence goals in high burden settings, particularly in East and Southern Africa, and then keeping HIV incidence at low levels will require the right combination of effective prevention interventions at high coverage levels.

In 2007 the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended VMMC to reduce the risk of men acquiring HIV infection during heterosexual exposure. The recommendation was based on strong evidence from randomized controlled trials of an approximately 60% lower risk.

Since 2007, more than 27 million VMMC procedures have been performed in the 15 priority countries of East and Southern Africa, where about half of all new HIV infections occurred. In the past ten years other evidence-based HIV prevention options have also been scaled up, including oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and HIV antiretroviral therapy (ART), with its secondary HIV prevention effect, along with already known interventions such as condom use and post-exposure prophylaxis.

In the ongoing effort to end the AIDS epidemic, a re-examination of the evidence shows that VMMC remains an important intervention alongside other effective behavioural and biomedical HIV prevention interventions. VMMC should be supported as a key HIV prevention option within combination prevention for adolescents 15 years and older and for adult men in settings with generalized HIV epidemics.