Conditional cash transfers to promote male circumcision uptake in middle and low income countries: review

Abstract

Voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) reduces female-to-male HIV transmission by approximately 60% and is a recommended HIV prevention strategy in countries with high HIV prevalence and low levels of male circumcision. Mathematical models have illustrated that VMMC scale-up across Sub-Saharan Africa could prevent up to 6 million new HIV infections and 3 million deaths by 2025. Compared to the epidemic impact of scaling up ART to 90-90-90 levels, VMMC scale-up demonstrated additional reductions in HIV incidence and lower long-term annual program costs in models applied to several Sub-Saharan African countries. Therefore, low income countries are facing several challenges among which economic factors such as lost wages and opportunity costs of time are likely to be important barriers for VMMC uptake. Conditional cash transfers have shown its efficacy in many studies conducting low and middle countries where economic factors are impacting negatively on VMMC.