The Ministry of Health has revealed a new plan to place free Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) in private pharmacies to increase access.
Speaking to journalists on Thursday Dr Herbert Kadama the PrEP coordinator at the Ministry revealed that the number of clients seeking PrEP, an HIV Prevention innovation that started in the country in 2017 with oral drugs called Truvada has since increased but can only be accessed in the government run facilities so far.
Now, with more PrEP options being approved for use in the country including the dapivirine vaginal ring and cabotegravir long-acting injection whose first doses are expected in the country in September, Kadama says it’s only timely that more providers can offer the service.
He explained that they are signing MOUs with private providers to offer these drugs free of charge to the clients at a cost that will be catered by the government.
About 800 people enrolled for oral PrEP in 2017 when Uganda started offering this prevention and this number has risen to about 700,000 people currently. When it comes to the dapivirine ring, Ministry of Health figures show 279 women have been enrolled at seven government hospitals in different regions of the country.
Kadama reveals that four more hospitals in Kyenjojo, Masaka, Jinja and Kampala and are going to start providing the ring with more funding from Global Fund, who are donors financing the prevention option.
However, while new options are increasingly coming up, Kadama notes that they have faced challenges of a high rate of drop out from PrEP. A previous assessment study found only four out of ten people who enrolled on oral PrEP still using the method six months later.
According to Dr Flavia Matovu Kiweewa, a Researcher at MU-JHU Research Collaboration the challenges of dropping out are partly due to pill burden and access issues which can be solved if people are given a number of options from which they can choose the most desirable method.
Matovu who is leading research on a new twice-yearly injection called lenacapivir that was recently found to be 100 per cent effective in preventing HIV in a blinded study involving cisgender women says such new innovations need to be adopted quickly once approved for open market use.
Noting that a lot of young women are getting newly infected, she calls for more activism towards global access and ensuring that countries like Uganda that have been involved in the study are offered swift access to this long-term PrEP option.
Meanwhile, the provision of PrEP in Uganda is largely funded by donors and Lillian Mworeko, an HIV prevention advocate calls upon government to invest in ensuring that there’s universal access to the various options.
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