Considerable Scale-Up Needed to Achieve 2025 Goals for HIV PrEP

MONDAY, Dec. 2, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Considerable scale-up is needed to achieve the 2025 goals for HIV preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP), according to research published in the Nov. 28 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Megan E. Peck, Ph.D., from the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues examined progress toward the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) goal of 21.2 million persons using PrEP globally in 2025.

The researchers note that CDC supported 856,816 PrEP initiations in 2023, representing nearly one-quarter of the 3.5 million persons globally who used PrEP that year. During 2017 to 2023, CDC supported PrEP initiations for 2,278,743 persons, who were almost all in sub-Saharan Africa (96.0 percent). Overall, 64.0 percent were female and 44.9 percent were aged 15 to 24 years. For the seven-year period, the CDC achieved 118.7 percent of its PrEP initiation targets. The majority of those initiating PrEP in sub-Saharan Africa were female sex workers, while most in Southeast Asia, Eurasia, and the Americas were men who have sex with men.

“Given the UNAIDS estimate of 3.5 million persons using PrEP globally during 2023, substantial scale-up is needed to reach the 2025 target of 21.2 million persons to reach 2030 goals for ending HIV as a public health threat,” the authors write. “Further expansion of PrEP programs that addresses barriers to initiation, including stigma, lack of awareness of PrEP services, and low risk perception among populations at high risk, could increase the number of persons initiating or continuing PrEP.”

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