Women's HIV Prevention Tracking Project (WHiPT)
Women's HIV Prevention Tracking Project (WHiPT) is a collaboration between AVAC and the ATHENA Network that supports women's community-based efforts to monitor, evaluate, and develop or expand advocacy around new and emerging HIV prevention strategies. WHiPT provides support for community-based teams working on specific issues within a local or national context. There are currently six WHiPT teams in southern and eastern Africa receiving support for pilot projects tracking the implications for women of the introduction of male circumcision for HIV prevention.
It has been roughly four years since randomized controlled trials of medical male circumcision in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda showed that medical male circumcision is safe and reduces men's risk of HIV infection during vaginal sex by about 60 percent. The advent of this new biomedical strategy has prompted a range of implementation efforts and civil society responses. WHiPT is a response to women’s concerns that emerged from the earliest discussions of this new strategy.
NEW REPORT: Making Medical Male Circumcision Work for Women - Final report, December 10, 2010Individual country reports also available:
Two-page Report Summary of
Making
Medical Male Circumcision Work for
Women
WHiPT released its first findings on male circumcision rollout at the 2010 IAS conference in Vienna. Teams of women in Namibia, Kenya, South Africa, Swaziland, and Uganda were part of the first, pilot phase of this research, focusing on the implications of MMC for women. In all but one region of focus (Nyanza in Kenya), MMC had not yet been rolled out; therefore, the women documented perceptions and concerns around MMC’s pending rollout, not actual or anecdotal experiences of the rollout.
WHiPT's Swaziland team, led by SWAPOL, documents the voices of women from the villages of Nkambeni, Oshoek and Sigwe in preparation for the introduction of medical male circumcision. (Photos taken October 2009).