Experts say PrEP is terribly underused.
According to the Associated Press, health workers are concerned by the lack of PrEP usage.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Truvada would be appropriate for about 1.2 million people in the U.S. — including sex workers and roughly 25 percent of gay men. Gilead Scientific, Truvada’s California-based manufacturer, says there are only about 145,000 active prescriptions for HIV prevention use, the AP reports.
Despite PrEP/Truvada lowering the risk of contracting HIV by 90 percent if taken daily, only about a dozen countries have government-backed programs to promote the pill.
Some of those locations are France, Norway, Belgium, Kenya, Scotland, England South Africa, Brazil and some Canadian provinces.
Unfortunately, the United States of American is not one of them.
As the Washington Blade also suggests, part of the problems in the United States of America is that Truvada costs a pretty penny, hasn’t convinced all doctors in the country, and has low usage rates from gay and bisexual men of color which is the demographic most affected by HIV.
In addition, when PrEP/Truvada is promoted, it’s often down through sexual innuendos such as New York’s “Bare It All” campaign or the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s “Raw, Real Language” campaign to entice black and Latino gay/bisexual men and transgender women into talking about HIV-prevention.
In time, perhaps more governments will push for the use of PrEP to help end HIV contraction. Sadly, we're not at that time yet.
