ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates new approaches to behavior change interventions through working with pre-existing human resource and cultural assets such as traditional leaders, in the area of AIDS. AIDS prevention programs could also collaborate with healers as partners in promoting male circumcision or reintroducing the practice in societies that do not promote it. As Green noted in his 2003 book Rethinking AIDS Prevention, populations in many parts of Africa and elsewhere have instinctively known how to respond to the threat of AIDS. Early in the AIDS pandemic, some South African healers were actually promoting voluntary circumcision to adult males from ethno linguistic groups that do not currently practice circumcision, such as the Zulu, Swazi, and Tswana. The HIV prevention solutions offered by the leaders amounted to reviving and strengthening African values, traditional moral codes, and social controls, such as those that encourage delay of sexual debut, discourage sex outside of marriage, and, in their view, protect women.
