Post by cjm on Apr 10, 2014 20:48:26 GMT
Truvada – why so many US gay men won’t take it to prevent HIV infection
Posted on April 7, 2014 in Health
It should be a no-brainer, given that South Africa is shown to have the world’s highest number of new HIV infections: a little blue oval pill proven to reduce the risk of HIV infection in healthy people by more than 90%.
The anti-retroviral drug, Truvada, was approved in the US in 2012 for pre-exposure prophylaxis ( PrEP for short) as well – in other words, to prevent infection from the sexually transmitted HI virus in the first place. In South Africa, it is still prescribed only to people already infected, though there are indications that some people use it off-label to prevent infection.
The South African government’s health department has been reluctant to follow the US lead, citing condom distribution as the most effective prevention campaign. That clearly hasn’t worked. The number of new infections signals an urgent need for a re-evaluation of Truvada, and ways of circumventing the controversy in the gay community, which AP writer David Crary details below.
www.biznews.com/truvada-many-us-gay-men-wont-take-prevent-hiv-infection/