Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Dec 31;19(12):e0316106.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0316106. eCollection 2024.

Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision's (VMMC) strategy for HIV prevention in Sub-Saharan Africa, prevalence, risks, costs, benefits and best practice: A scoping review study protocol of progress and unfolding insights

Charles Maibvise  1 , Takaedza Munangatire  2 , Nestor Tomas  2 , Daniel O Ashipala  2 , Priscilla S Dlamini  3
Affiliations

Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision's (VMMC) strategy for HIV prevention in Sub-Saharan Africa, prevalence, risks, costs, benefits and best practice: A scoping review study protocol of progress and unfolding insights

Charles Maibvise et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Campaigns to scale up Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) for the prevention of HIV transmission has been going on for years in selected Southern African countries, following recommendations from the World Health Organisations. Despite significant strides made in the initiative and its proven benefits, controversies surrounding the strategy have never ceased, and its future remains uncertain especially as some countries near their initial targets. Over the years, as the campaigns unfolded, a lot of insights have been generated in favour of continuing the VMMC campaigns, although some insights portray the impression that the strategy is not worthy of the risks and effort required, or that enough has been done, as the targets have now been achieved. This article proposes a scoping review that aims at synthesizing and consolidating that evidence into a baseline for a further systematic review aimed at developing sound recommendations for the future of the VMMC strategy for HIV prevention. The scoping review will target all scientific literature published on the Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Science Direct, PubMed as well as grey literature from Google Scholar and WHO Institutional Repository for Information Sharing (IRIS) from the inception of the campaigns. The review shall be guided by Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) framework for scoping reviews, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist shall be followed. Discussion of the findings is envisioned to yield evidence that can be further analysed to give insights about risk/cost-benefits ratios of the strategy at this point in time as well as best clinical practices for the VMMC procedure, to inform the future of the strategy. This protocol is registered with the Open Science Framework, registration ID https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/SFZC9.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Sequential Guiding documents for VMMC.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Visual representation of Arksey and O’Malley framework.
Fig 3
Fig 3. PRISMA flow diagram for scoping reviews [adapted from JBI, (2015) [30]].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. WHO, UNAIDS. New Data on Male Circumcision and HIV Prevention: Policy and Programme Implications [Internet]. WHO Press. 2007. [cited 2023 Apr 18]. p. 1–10. Available from: https://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/mc_recommendation....
    1. Njeuhmeli E, Forsythe S, Reed J, Opuni M, Bollinger L, Heard N, et al.. Voluntary medical male circumcision: Modeling the impact and cost of expanding male circumcision for HIV prevention in Eastern and Southern Africa. PLoS Med. 2011;8(11). doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001132 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. WHO. Male Circumcision for HIV Prevention—Implementing the 2017–2021 Framework for Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision 27 February–1 March 2017, Meeting Report. [Internet]. Brazavile; 2017 [cited 2023 Apr 23]. p. 56. Available from: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/325174/9789290234050-en....
    1. WHO, UNAIDS. Progress Brief: Uneven progress on the voluntary medical male circumcision—Programme across 15 eastern and southern African countries in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. [Internet]. Vol. 2022. WHO; 2022. Available from: https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/hq-hiv-hepatitis-and-stis-....
    1. WHO, UNAIDS. Joint strategic action framework to accelerate the scale-up of voluntary medical male circumcision for HIV prevention in Eastern and Southern Africa, 2012–2016. No Title [Internet]. UNAIDS; 2011. Available from: https://www.unaids.org/en/media/unaids/contentassets/documents/unaidspub....