Opinion: HIV 'morning after drug' can help end this pandemic
By Patricia Atieno Ong’wen, Elizabeth Irungu // 23 July 2024
By now, we all know all too well there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to HIV/AIDS.
If we are really committed to finishing off something so complex as a 40-plus-year-old pandemic, we should expand our well-intentioned push for PrEP, or preexposure prophylaxis, to also highlight PEP — post-exposure prophylaxis, an intervention that’s largely ignored to the detriment of many who need it and want it.
Why is PEP glaringly nonexistent in HIV prevention programs — not only in Kenya, where we live and work, but also across the World Health Organization African region, with 25.6 million people living with HIV in 2022, and accounting for 50% of new HIV infections globally?
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About the authors
Patricia Atieno Ong’wen
Patricia Atieno Ong’wen is the deputy project director for the PharmPrEP project, Jhpiego Kenya. She was the deputy project director on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Jilinde project, the first PrEP scale up project in Africa. She has worked with at-risk populations to improve their health and well-being in Africa.
Elizabeth Irungu
Elizabeth Irungu is the regional technical adviser for implementation science and PrEP service delivery at Jhpiego. She serves in a leadership role on implementation science studies for new PrEP products under MOSAIC, a USAID-funded project, and is protocol co-chair for the CATALYST study.
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