Activists demand access to groundbreaking HIV prevention tool

Activists stormed the Gilead exhibition at the 25th International AIDS Conference in Munich, Germany, yesterday following the release of a new study showing that a year’s supply of an emerging preventive HIV injection, lenacapavir, can be manufactured for $40.

The U.S. pharmaceutical giant controls the patent over the twice-yearly injection, which showed 100% efficacy in recent trials conducted among women and adolescent girls in Uganda and South Africa. But the company currently charges over $40,000 for the first year of access to lenacapavir in the United States, where it is only available as a form of HIV treatment at the moment.

Activists demanded that Gilead immediately begin the process of issuing voluntary licenses that would allow for affordable, generic production of the tool for preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, or that more countries take steps to break the patents that guard the intellectual property.