UIC Receives $8.6M Grant To Join Male Circumcision ConsortiumThe University of Illinois at Chicago has received an $8.6 million grant from Family Health International to take part in the Male Circumcision Consortium.
The consortium was established by a five-year, $18.5 million grant to Family Health International from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and will improve and expand voluntary medical circumcision services throughout Kenya as part of an overall strategy to reduce HIV infections in men.
Three recent studies conducted in African countries, including one led by UIC School of Public Health epidemiologist and professor, Robert Bailey, have shown that medical circumcision dramatically reduces a man’s risk of acquiring HIV from an infected woman.
UIC and its Kenyan partner organization, the Nyanza Reproductive Health Society, will expand and further support a medical circumcision training center to build capacity in Kenyan public health facilities and among private practitioners to provide safe circumcisions in the context of full HIV-prevention services. UIC and consortium partners EngenderHealth and FHI will monitor and evaluate the safety and quality of the services. They will also evaluate whether men change their behavior after being circumcised.
"One concern about circumcision is that if we promote it as an HIV-prevention strategy, some men may get circumcised and feel they are protected from acquiring the virus," said Bailey, who is a lead researcher for the consortium. "We are going to conduct a study to see if men compensate for their circumcision status and increase their risky sexual behaviors."
The consortium will also conduct a random household survey in Kisumu, Kenya -- where circumcision services will be provided and promoted as an HIV prevention strategy -- to determine if, over a period of five years, people’s beliefs and attitudes about circumcision change, and if their risk behaviors change because they feel more protected from HIV knowing that more men in the community are circumcised.
Since 1995, Bailey and colleagues have conducted research on male circumcision and HIV infection in east and southern Africa. Bailey’s most recent clinical trial showed that medical circumcision reduces a man’s risk of acquiring HIV during heterosexual intercourse by 59 percent. The results of this and two additional trials, Bailey said, "led to a major policy shift to provide circumcision services widely throughout East and Southern Africa."
In March 2007, the World Health Organization and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS published their conclusions and recommendations to reduce the number of HIV infections by increasing the number of circumcised men.
"This partnership between FHI, EngenderHealth, UIC and the Government of Kenya will enable us to provide free and accessible HIV-prevention in areas of Kenya where an estimated 18 percent of uncircumcised men are HIV-infected by age 25," Bailey said.
UIC ranks among the nation’s top 50 universities in federal research funding and is Chicago’s largest university with 25,000 students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state’s major public medical center. A hallmark of the campus is the Great Cities Commitment, through which UIC faculty, students and staff engage with community, corporate, foundation and government partners in hundreds of programs to improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas around the world.
Contact: Sherri McGinnis González, (312) 996-8277, smcginn@uic.edu.
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