Zambia has won a prestigious award for its outstanding performance in the Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) programme supported by the government of the United States of America’s President’s Emergence Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) inter-agency team.
VMMC is one of the high impact HIV prevention interventions adopted in Zambia in combination with other strategies such as condom programming, HIV Testing Services (HTS) and elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV, Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) among others.
The award given at the just ended program’s Annual Meeting in Durban, South Africa coinciding with the 21st International AIDS, recognizes the PEPFAR inter-agency team in Zambia for “Best Achievements for Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC)” for excellence in achieving VMMC program goals, and the “Best Use of Data for Program Planning” for remarkably advancing the use of data in close cooperation with country counterparts for program planning.
The PEPFAR agencies credited for making the VMMC an award winning feat include the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of State and Defence, USAID and the Peace Corps.
From 14 countries in Africa, Zambia emerged tops along with Mozambique which received a similar award. The other countries which were vying the award are Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, Swaziland, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
To date, 1,200,000 VMMC procedures have been conducted country wide since 2007 when the campaign kicked off.
Zambia set a target of circumcising 1,949,000 males aged 15 – 49 years (80% coverage by 2015).
As of the end of 2015, the program has completed 56% (1,166,188) of this target.
A total of 32,350 VMMC were conducted in quarter 1 of 2016.
Under the 2016 April-May campaign, 85,138 VMMC were performed beating the period’s target of 80,000. Copperbelt Province recorded the highest procedures at 18, 171 closely followed by Lusaka at 13,393 and Central at 12,662.
Southern was next at 9,628 followed by Luapula at 8,175 and Eastern with 6,376 followed by North Western at 6,150. Northern Province registered 4,343 while Muchinga recorded 3,736 while Western Province was lowest at 3,074.
Some of the major findings in the April-May campaign were that government has taken ownership of the program and supported facilities with the necessities for VMMC where partners were absent, HIV test kits were received late in districts, transport continues to be a serious challenge for all the provinces especially for outreaches activities while Cultural barriers are still a challenge to overcome especially in the rural areas.
Some of the recommendations to improve VMMC uptake in Zambia include the following:
- There is need to make VMMC a routine service provision throughout the provinces.
- There is need for training of more VMMC providers.
- Districts are advised to have data review meetings to strengthen data capture in the Health Management Information System (HMIS).
- There is need for demand generation mapping to assess which strategies work better in urban and rural settings
- There is need for districts to use NHCs for demand generation by breaking the district targets by zones.
Source: NAC Communications Unit
Pictures: Courtesy of JHPIEGO Zambia Country office
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