Unitaid will bring innovative HIV prevention treatment to Brazil and South Africa

The international organization Unitaid will fund the introduction in Brazil and South Africa of an innovative preventive treatment for HIV, a long-term injectable treatment, the agency said on Friday.

“Today, the Unitaid agency announces an agreement to start using an injection in South Africa and Brazil that will protect users from HIV for eight weeks,” said a Unitaid spokesperson in Geneva, Hervé Verhoosel.

This program, she explained, is aimed at a very particular audience: “adolescent girls and young women in South Africa, since they are currently the first to be affected by HIV, and transgender people and men who have sex with men in Brazil, who are also heavily affected segments of the population.”

In a statement, Unitaid explains that this injectable version of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) - also called long-acting cabotegravir - is the latest innovation in HIV prevention.

“The United States and England have just approved this system, although it is not yet available,” Verhoosel said.

This treatment has been shown to be 70 to 90% more effective than daily oral PrEP intake in reducing the risk of HIV infection and requires only six injections per year, according to the organization.

In partnership with Fiocruz in Brazil and Wits RHI in South Africa, as well as with health authorities in both countries, Unitaid will eventually include this type of treatment in national sexual health programmes.

The first doses have been donated by pharmaceutical companies, Verhoosel said.

The agency has asked laboratories to adapt their prices to low-income countries and, in the long term, to allow the manufacture of generics.

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