Amid the mostly depressing HIV headlines of recent times, concerned as they mainly are with the deadly impacts of donor defunding, South Africa’s imminent roll-out of a twice-yearly HIV prevention injection called lenacapavir (LEN) has been a spot of bright light. Staff in 360 healthcare facilities spread across the country stand trained and ready to […]
The uptake of the once-every-six-month HIV prevention jab lenacapavir (LEN) in South Africa will be heavily affected by the Trump administration’s funding cuts to the country, a new report has found. Researchers conducted in-depth interviews with doctors, nurses, peer counsellors, transgender and young people, sex workers, gay and bisexual men and government health workers with personal experience of the funding cuts in Cape Town and Johannesburg
The HIV prevention shot, lenacapavir, will be rolled out at South African clinics within the next couple of months and from 2027, the health department will also buy generics. But how best to spend the HIV prevention budget so that the country can drive infections down as fast as possible? We take a look at what the modelling data shows
After a year of US funding cuts across global public health, including South Africa’s hard-hit HIV programmes, new realities are settling in
We talked to experts in obesity, tobacco, artificial intelligence, HIV, TB and the NHI to find out what we can expect — and what we can’t — this year
Who should get what slice of the pie once the medicine is available in public clinics? And are numbers alone what would drive decisions?
None of the companies that will be involved have a licence from the inventor of Lenacapavir, Gilead Sciences, to make the jab
The country’s medicines regulator Sahpra says it’s on track to announce its registration decision by the end of October
The shot, called Lenacapavir, has a 100% success rate in preventing young women from getting HIV through sex
Hetero and Dr Reddy’s will be funded by the Gates Foundation and Unitaid to produce and sell the twice-a-year anti-HIV shot around R692 per person a year
The health department hopes to make the twice-a-year anti-HIV injection lenacapavir available soon and to be buying generics by 2027
The $400 million the United States congress removed from a list of funding programmes the Trump administration wants to cut doesn’t cancel the cuts to HIV and TB programmes made in February
The country isn’t getting extra money from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria; it has to use cash from a grant it has already been awarded and was cut by 16% in June
If all of its National Institutes of Health funding falls away, the country could lose 70% of its medical research capacity
A modelling study released in March gives a clue at which price the jab, lenacapavir, would be worth the health department’s while
In December, the Global Fund and the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief committed to funding the roll-out of lenacapavir in countries they support
The US has said who qualifies for a waiver during the Trump administration’s pause in foreign aid but it doesn’t allow for anti-HIV pills, unless for pregnant women
Lenacapavir drug can be made for as little as R740 per year for each patient
CAB-LA virtually eliminates someone’s chances of contracting HIV, but costs about four times more than the government can afford to pay