Table 2.

Policy development and review processes for the HIV Counseling and Testing (HCT) and Safe Male Circumcision (SMC) policies at the Ministry of Health, Uganda

	Revision of HCT policy	Medical male circumcision new policy development
Duration of policy development and implementation process	2 years (planned duration to completion was 8 months)	1 year (planned duration was 6 months)
Presence of guidelines	No specific guidelines followed	No specific guidelines followed
Technical working team (15)	Leader: DG, MoH; technical staff, implementing partners, development agencies, academicians, and CSO	SMC National Task Force (NTF) for HIV prevention included senior MoH technical staff members, development partners, implementing partners and CSO
Technical team selection	Based on previous experience in policy development engagement, experience in HCT implementation	Appointed by the Director General MoH Team included experienced persons in HIV response
Technical working group meeting	Several held to produce draft 0	Consultant hired right from the beginning to produce draft 0
Consultative meetings	Held to develop drafts 1 and 2	Held to produce draft 2
		-Stakeholders meeting produced draft 3
Peer review by technical team	Develop draft 3	NTF reviewed draft 0 to produce draft 3
Senior management committee review	Develop draft 4	NTF forwarded final report tosenior management that developed draft 4
Director general of Health Services	Endorsed draft 4	Endorsed draft 4
Launching	Launched by MoH before public use
Challenges	Limited indigenous funding for policy development activities	Limited policy development activities
	Busy TWG members

DG: Director General of Health Services; TWG: Technical Working Group; CSO: Civil Society Organizations.