While they represent 30% of new infections, women only made up 0.7% of PrEP prescriptions.
She made her way among men. PrEP, which some describe as the “chemical preservative” – although it only protects against HIV and not other STIs – is becoming established in France as a tool to fight new infections, among the panoply of methods preventive.
Since January 2016, this medicine can be prescribed to people at high risk of contracting HIV through sex. This treatment was initially the subject of a temporary recommendation for use in order to monitor and evaluate the beginnings of PrEP in France (pre-exposure prophylaxis). In one year, more than 3,000 people have benefited from it. Among them, very few women.
“Nonsense”
According to the AIDES association, which warns of this absence, women only represent 0.7% of PrEP beneficiaries…. While among the new contaminations that we deplore each year, 30% are women.
“In France, some women are still particularly exposed to HIV: this is particularly the case of migrant women of African origin, trans women and sex workers. These should be considered as priority audiences and benefit from easier access to all prevention tools, starting with one of the most innovative: PrEP, ”AIDES insisted in a press release.
Thus, for the association, the low inclusion of women in PrEP is “nonsense”. “The epidemic remains very active among certain groups of women: a migrant woman of African origin, for example, is 69 times more likely to be infected than the general population. PrEP would represent a particularly effective protection tool for these women and would constitute an additional means of freeing themselves from the goodwill of their partners in terms of prevention ”, underlines Catherine Aumond, vice-president of AIDES.
Targeted campaigns
The association therefore calls on the public authorities to “do everything in their power to ensure better ownership of this tool among the women most concerned”. This requires the evolution of the recommendations of the High Authority for Health (HAS) and “the explicit inclusion of women most at risk in the list of priority audiences for PrEP, in accordance with WHO recommendations”.
AIDES also calls for the establishment of dedicated research projects, data collections and targeted information and awareness campaigns.
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