Voluntary medical male circumcision is a cost-effective, one-time intervention that provides lifelong partial protection against female-to-male HIV transmission. Modelling studies have suggested that achieving 80% circumcision prevalence among men aged 15 to 49 years by 2015—and then sustaining it—would avert 3.4 million HIV infections by 2025.
Since 2007, tremendous efforts have been made to scale up voluntary medical male circumcision in 14 priority countries in eastern and southern Africa that have high levels of HIV prevalence and low levels of male circumcision. By the end of 2015, nearly 11.6 million men in these countries had been medically circumcised.
