Scaling up male circumcision in SA to prevent HIV infections

South Africa has the world’s largest HIV epidemic with an estimated seven million people living with HIV and more than 380,000 new HIV infections each year. Medical male circumcision (MMC) has been identified as a key HIV prevention intervention for South Africa as it reduces the risk of female to male HIV transmission by approximately 60%.

In 2010, the South African National Department of Health (NDOH) began implementing a plan to medically circumcise men between the ages 15-49. By 2019, the national MMC programme has achieved extraordinary scale having circumcised close to 3.8 million men.

MMC SUSTAIN (Medical Male Circumcision Scale Up and Sustainability to Avert New HIV Infections) is a three-year investment from The Gates Foundation. The grant was awarded to MMC SUSTAIN, comprising Genesis Analytics and the Foundation for Professional Development (FPD) in September 2018. The strategic goal is to go beyond scaling up the national MMC programme and transitioning toward sustainability of MMC in South Africa. The MMC SUSTAIN team is providing technical assistance to the South African national MMC programme to build resilient local systems that successfully plan, effectively manage, and efficiently execute the programme at scale.

Our team provides technical assistance to the South African National MMC programme. We design and implement behaviourally informed interventions to understand the causes of, and solutions to, existing low levels of ownership, motivation and capacity across the programme. Interventions will aim to:

Improve integration of the MMC programme across public health services;
Encourage positive feedback processes;
Increase adherence to quality assurance and data reporting processes;
Improve planning and management.

By incorporating social/non-financial incentives into the performance management, we can improve motivation of the programme staff.

Our support for the MMC national programme will focus on technical assistance in eight districts across three provinces, namely KwaZulu-Natal (eThekwini, Amajuba, iLembe, uMgungundlovu), Mpumalanga (Gert Sibande), and Gauteng (City of Johannesburg, West Rand and Ekurhuleni).

Behavioural economics is effective at driving behaviour change

We provide support for govt plan of 2,5m male circumcisions by 2022

Nudging PHC healthcare workers to refer men for VMMC in South Africa