(VIENNA, July 20 , 2010) The U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Eric Goosby and the World Health Organization’s Director of HIV, TB, and Malaria, Africa Regional Office, Dr. David Okello, joined PSI (Population Services International) today in calling for greater efforts to rapidly and efficiently scale up male circumcision service delivery in Eastern and Southern Africa.
In March 2007, WHO and UNAIDS recommended adult male circumcision as an effective HIV prevention intervention, able to reduce the risk of HIV infection among men by up to 60 percent. Male circumcision is the only intervention to show consistent efficacy in clinical trials. Scaling up male circumcision to reach 80 percent of adult and newborn males in Eastern and Southern Africa by 2015 could avert more than 4 million new HIV infections between 2009 and 2025 and could yield a total net savings ofUS$20.2 billion during the same time period.
Speaking at an afternoon press conference at the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Dr. Krishna Jafa, PSI Director of HIV, TB and Reproductive Health, said, “With global resources spread thin, we must focus on expanding proven and cost-effective methods like male circumcision to prevent HIV transmission.” Those comments echoed similar remarks made yesterday by former President Bill Clinton and philanthropist Bill Gates, who both called for rapid and efficient scale up of male circumcision as a proven, cost-effective method of HIV prevention.
Despite the understanding of the need for scale-up, barriers still remain in many countries where the epidemic has hit hardest. Shortages of trained health care providers and inefficiencies in traditional delivery methods have prevented many countries from reaching their target goals for numbers of men circumcised.
PSI – which provides male circumcision services in four countries across Southern Africa and communications support in six – today released its ground-breaking study from Zimbabwe, where researchers customized and implemented the MOVE model for male circumcision. MOVE (Models of Optimizing Volumes and Efficiency) optimizes the use of staff and facility space to allow task shifting and task sharing. It also prioritizes clinical techniques and surgical methods to help scale up male circumcision services. The study shows that the quality of the procedure was not compromised by the model and there were no increases in the percentage of clients reporting adverse events following the procedure.
“The MOVE model was successful in Zimbabwe due in large part to the strong support of the Zimbabwean government, which made MOVE a part of its nationwide expansion of male circumcision services,” said PSI President and CEO Karl Hofmann, who moderated the press conference. “In order to replicate this success elsewhere, we must engage all sectors – public, private and non-governmental organizations alike – in expanding access to high-quality male circumcision services through efficient service delivery and supply chain management systems.”
PSI will host a satellite session on strategies for scaling up male circumcision services on Wednesday July 21 at the International AIDS Conference. Frances Cowan of the University College of London, who also spoke at today’s press conference, will join representatives from USAID, the Centers of Disease Control, Family Health International and the Nyanza Reproductive Health Society in Kenya to discuss issues such as cost-effectiveness, informed demand and integrating neonatal male circumcision services in the session.
About PSI
PSI is a leading global health organization with programs targeting malaria, child survival, HIV, reproductive health and non-communicable disease. Working in partnership within the public and private sectors, and harnessing the power of markets, PSI provides life-saving products, clinical services and behavior change communications that empower the world’s most vulnerable populations to lead healthier lives. staging.psi-2017.flywheelsites.com Follow PSI on Twitter and on the Healthy Lives blog: twitter.com/PSIHealthyLives andhttp://healthylivesblog.blogspot.com/
Training health workers in Angola
By: Anya Fedorova, Country Representative, PSI Angola
The shortage of skilled health workers is widely acknowledged as a significant barrier to achieving Universal Health Coverage. To address this challenge, PSI supported ministries of health to develop a digital ecosystem that brings together stewardship, learning, and performance management (SLPM). The ecosystem enhances training, data-driven decision-making, and the efficiency of healthcare delivery.
Here’s what it looks like in practice.
In July 2020, PSI Angola, alongside the Angolan digital innovation company Appy People, launched Kassai, an eLearning platform that targets public sector health workers in Angola. Through funding from USAID and the President’s Malaria Initiatve (PMI), Kassai features 16 courses in malaria, family planning, and maternal and child health – with plans to expand learning topic areas through funding from ExxonMobil Foundation and private sector companies. A partnership with UNITEL, the largest telecommunication provider in Angola, provides all public health providers in Angola free internet access to use Kassai.
Kassai’s analytics system to follow learners’ success rate and to adjust the course content to learners’ performance and needs. Kassai analytics are integrated with DHIS2 – the Health Management Information System (HMIS) of Angolan MOH, to be able to link learners’ knowledge and performance with the health outcomes in the health facilities. The analytics track learners’ performance by course and gives visibility by health provider, health facility, municipality, and province. Each course has pre-and post-evaluation tests to track progress of learning, too.
By the end of 2022, there were 6,600 unique users on the Kassai platform and 31,000 course enrollments. PSI Angola’s partnership with UNITEL, the largest telecommunication provider in Angola, allows for free internet access to learn on the Kassai for all public health providers in Angola. Building on its success for malaria training, Kassai now also provides courses in family planning, COVID-19, and maternal and child health. This reduces training silos and provides cross-cutting benefits beyond a single disease.
Implementing the SLPM digital ecosystem brings numerous benefits to health systems. It allows for more strategic and efficient workforce training and performance management, enabling ministries of health to track changes in health workers’ knowledge, quality of care, service utilization, and health outcomes in real time. The ecosystem also supports better stewardship of mixed health systems by facilitating engagement with the private sector, aligning training programs and standards of care, and integrating private sector data into national HMIS. Furthermore, it enables the integration of community health workers into the broader health system, maximizing their impact and contribution to improving health outcomes and strengthening primary healthcare.
