Determinants of the uptake of voluntary safe medical male circumcision among men aged 18-45 Years in Wakiso District: case study of Masulita Sub-County

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to explore the determinants of the uptake of voluntary safe medical male circumcision among men aged 18-45 years in Wakiso district and a case study of Masulita sub-county. The study strictly utilized primary data which was collected from a sample of 100 men from different households which were randomly selected in Masulita sub-county. Data was collected using a questionnaire which was designed in Kobo collect and later it was downloaded as an Excel file which was then exported to Stata 15.0 software for analysis.

The study revealed that 57% of the total number of respondents were aged between 26-35 years and the minority age group was that of 18-25 years which only constituted 18%. Findings further showed that 55% of the respondents were married, about 7 in 10 men reported being employed, 53% of the men had attained a tertiary level of education while only 19% of the respondents had attained a secondary level of education.

The study found out that the level of uptake of Voluntary safe medical male circumcision among men aged 18-45 years in Masulita sub-county was 62%. Multivariate analysis which was performed using binary logistic regression revealed that uptake of VMMC among men aged 18-45 years in Masulita was influenced by their level of education, level of awareness of the importance of male circumcision and distance travelled to the health facility. The study further revealed that men with a tertiary level of education were nine times more likely to be male circumcision adopters (OR= 9.2, P= 0.04, 95% CI= 1.10-76.88) than those with no level of education. The men who were knowledgeable about the benefits of male circumcision were almost eleven times more likely to be circumcised (OR= 11.16, P= 0.005, 95% CI=2.08-59.82) than those who were less informed and the men whose distance to the health facility was shorter were more likely to take on male circumcision (OR= 32.07, P<0.001, 95% CI = 6.84-150.37) than those who were supposed to move longer distances.

The study recommended that the government should invest more in the education sector so as to make education cheap and easily accessible to widen people’s knowledge so as they can easily understand the benefits of VMMC. It was further recommended that more awareness should be created among the public about VMMC through leaders, health workers, mass media and other platforms. Lastly, more health facilities should be constructed to increase on the number of circumcision centres as well as bringing the circumcision service closer to people as this will increase the uptake of VMMC.