About eight years ago three randomized controlled studies showed done in Uganda, Kenya and South Africa showed that male circumcision for sexually active men provides up to 60% protection against HIV infection. Increasingly with support from PEPFAR, voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) is being added to other HIV prevention interventions in high HIV prevalence and low male circumcision prevalence areas, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

I was born in the 80s, the same decade that the HIV epidemic began. Yet I was too young to remember the fear, the lives lost, the activism, and the scientific advances of the first decade of the epidemic. Fast forward to the 2000s where I found myself and my peers, as young people in the United States, unacquainted with the reality of HIV around us.

I got involved in the AIDS epidemic very inadvertently: A friend of mine who was working at Massachusetts Department of Public Health in the late eighties called and said they needed the expertise of those of us involved in developing community-based, long-term care services for elders.

While growing up in Jos, Nigeria, one of my important mentors, Mary Beth Oyebade, started the Mashiah Foundation with her husband to support HIV+ women and widows. Their dedication to meeting the clear needs they saw showed me how relevant and important holistically addressing HIV/AIDS is in Nigeria. I just knew I was going to become a doctor.

In 1988 I was living in NYC, doing my postgraduate courses as a Clinical Psychologist in Systemic Family Therapy. I was videotaping clinical sessions to help pay for my studies. I taped groups of psychologists discussing their cases. I was told that there were some cases of clients living with HIV and no one wanted to videotape those; I volunteered to do it, and that’s when I got trapped.