Circumcision, information, and HIV prevention

Despite the substantial effort in the past decade by multi-national organizations, governments and non- governmental organization, HIV/AIDS continues to spread (USAID 2005). Recently, attention has been placed on male circumcision as a potential HIV prevention strategy. Randomized control trials in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda, provided evidence that male circumcision is up to 60 percent effective in reducing transmission risk. Despite the fact that male circumcision has been shown to significantly lower the transmission rate of HIV, many countries have been slow at adopting male circumcision as a core HIV prevention strategy. One concern about disseminating the information about male circumcision and HIV is that circumcised men may engage in riskier sex after learning that they are less at risk of contracting the virus.

This paper examines the effects of an information intervention about HIV transmission risk and male circumcision among a sample of approximately 900 circumcised and 300 un-circumcised men living in rural Malawi. The study highlights that:

• by measuring condom purchases and self-reported sexual behaviour, no evidence of disinhibition among circumcised men in the treatment group were found immediately or one year later after the information campaign
• uncircumcised men in the treatment group significantly increase the likelihood of purchasing condoms immediately after the information intervention by approximately 10 percentage points, weakly persisting after one year. This evidences that uncircumcised men who learn about HIV and circumcision decreased risky sexual behaviour.