Gee, it was only a couple of years ago, when the HIV prophylactic drug Truvada was first becoming available, that there were articles talking about how some gay men were stigmatised by other gay men for using it. It was a controversial question - will it give licence to men to go back to behaviour of the kind that led to the HIV breakout in the first place - lots of non safe, casual sexual encounters with low regard for consequences.
How quickly the qualms seem to be vanishing, with news that the government is almost certainly going to subsidise its use.
I can understand that their might be an economic benefit to using it - if the cost of prevention is cheaper than the cost of treatment. I see from a post here in 2014 that it was estimated then that the cost of antiviral treatment was $18,000 per year per person. I wonder if it still runs at that cost. How did Africa get around that problem - I don't know the details of that story,
And I guess that guys (and the odd woman) using PReP may not be using it all of their life - if ever they decide that having sex with one, non infected person is the easiest way to not catch HIV.
But - it still grates that, unlike your average drug, it is not treating an illness, but is more like a super expensive version of a condom for people who refuse to use other, pretty simple strategies (like condoms or other forms of safe sex until reaching high confidence of mutual monogamy with a partner with no disease - how radical) for having a healthy sex life.
One thing I bet will be an outcome - a continuing rise in other STDs due to the non use of condoms.
No comments:
Post a Comment