Through a new five-year award from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, IntraHealth International will strengthen and scale up a comprehensive package of high-quality, safe services for voluntary medical male circumcision among adolescents and adult men in Tanzania, thereby reducing recipients’ risk of contracting HIV through heterosexual intercourse by at least 60%. The work will focus on adult men aged 15-29 in order to have the most immediate impact on the epidemic.

Today about 1.4 million Tanzanians live with HIV, or 5.3% of adults. More than half of those infected are women, and 91,000 are children. A shortage of health workers exacerbates the country’s HIV epidemic and limits Tanzanians’ access to care, especially in rural and hard-to-reach areas.  

IntraHealth’s Tohara Plus Project will lead a consortium that includes two local partners—the Tanzania Youth Alliance (TAYOA) and IntraHealth’s local affiliate, AFYA Plus—as it trains more health workers to provide high-quality circumcision services safely and efficiently. Together with the government of Tanzania, we will work to reach 80% male circumcision prevalence in 16 targeted districts by 2020.  

This new work builds on the many successes of IntraHealth’s Tanzania HIV Prevention Project, which provided circumcision services to over 579,000 men and boys—exceeding PEPFAR targets during four out of five project years. Tohara Plus will expand these services to reach an additional 412,000 Tanzanians, including infants, by integrating early infant male circumcision in reproductive and child health clinics for sustainability.

Scaling up these services and training more health workers to provide them will help IntraHealth and our local partners to tackle Tanzania’s HIV epidemic sustainably. It will also contribute to the UNAIDS 2021 voluntary medical male circumcision targets and work toward the country’s vision of an AIDS-free generation.

The Tohara Plus Project is funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.