Story By Dickens Wasonga.
KENYA’S ministry of public health in collaboration with the Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision program has launched a Rapid Results Initiative — an intensive effort to meet the anticipated high demand for voluntary medical male circumcision services in Nyanza Province during upcoming the school holidays.
The initiative which is targeting to boost access to services was launched today at the Kisumu’s Jomo Kenyatta Sports Ground.
By increasing access to the services and promoting their use, the government’s program hopes to reach about 41,000 men and boys and help provide related HIV prevention services by the close of this year.
“The government and its partners will put together all the available resources to make VMMC widely accessible in 12 districts in Nyanza,” said Nyanza Provincial Commissioner Francis Mutie, who launched the 2010 RRI.
His speech was read by Kisumu East district commissioner, Mabeya Mogaka. He was assisted by Dr. Jackson Kioko, the provincial director of public health and sanitation.
During the first RRI in November-December 2009, more than 37,000 men and boys were circumcised in a record 30 days in an area which traditionally did not circumcise their males.
This year’s RRI builds on the lessons learned from last year’s initiative with even greater emphasis on bringing services closer to communities and communicating the benefits of VMMC for HIV prevention.
Mr. Mutie asked the citizens of Nyanza to support the 2010 RRI.
“I especially urge men aged between 15 to 49 years to heed this call,” he said, explaining that men in this age group can benefit most from male circumcision because they tend to be sexually active and therefore most at risk of acquiring and transmitting HIV.
About 47 percent of clients during the 2009 RRI were younger than 15. Circumcision will help protect these boys from HIV in the future, but it will not have an immediate effect on Kenya ’s HIV epidemic because most of them are not yet sexually active.
That is why the 2010 includes special efforts to encourage men and teens who are older than 15 to seek VMMC services. Satisfied clients from this age group will inform their peers about the benefits of medical male circumcision, and the programme will redouble its efforts to make VMMC available at convenient times and locations.
These efforts will help the government reach its ambitious objective of providing comprehensive HIV prevention services that include male circumcision to 426,500 men and boys in Nyanza by 2013.
Doing so will help the VMMC program achieve its ultimate goal of circumcising 1.1 million men nationwide by 2014, which would prevent an estimated 900,000 HIV infections in men and women.
The partners collaborating with the ministries of health to implement the 2010 RRI are the Nyanza Reproductive Health Society (NRHS), IMPACT Research and Development Organization, Family AIDS Care and Education Services, the Catholic Medical Mission Board, the AIDS Population and Health Integrated Assistance (APHIA) II Nyanza Project, the Male Circumcision Consortium (which consists of FHI, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Engender Health working with NRHS), PSI, the C-Change Project of the Academy for Educational Development, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
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