Thu 11 Jun 2015 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
The New Zealand AIDS Foundation has been given the go-ahead from Pharmac and the Ministry of Health to trial PrEP in New Zealand. The organisations met yesterday, along with Auckland Sexual Health, following approval of the scheme. The NZAF says work is underway to gain the various clinical and ethical sign offs from the DHB to make PrEP available to people at high risk of HIV, through the sexual health service. Body Positive will also be involved in developing the project. PrEP, or Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, is the use of HIV treatment medication by people who are HIV-negative in order to reduce their risk of HIV infection. Its use in New Zealand is tightly limited to a very few people who appear unable to practice safe-sex techniques such as using condoms and who for sexual, social or partnership reasons are at heightened risk of being exposed to the virus. An influential activist movement to make PrEP broadly available as an alternative to condoms has been gaining momentum in overseas centres such as San Francisco and London where HIV is more prevalent than in New Zealand and where there has historically been less of a 'condom culture.' The NZAF, which leads NZ's campaign against the spread of HIV, has long resisted widening the availability of PrEP due to its expense and concern that it would undermine use of cheap and effective condoms which also provide protection against other STDs such as syphilis. The Foundation says PrEP, which can cost over $1,200 a month, is not funded so Auckland Sexual Health is also looking at how to overcome this hurdle for the project. “Hopes are high the project will be active by the end of 2015,” it adds.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 11th June 2015 - 4:52pm