National AIDS Trust, Terrence Higgins Trust, PrEPster and 47 other HIV, health and equality organisations are today jointly calling for urgent action to ensure the benefits of the national roll out of PrEP – the HIV drug – means “no community is left behind”.

Today researchers from the Federal University of São Paulo and others presented evidence at the International AIDS Conference 2020 of the possible first long-term remission of chronic HIV-1 infection without myeloablation.
 

Deborah Gold, Chief Executive of National AIDS Trust, said:

Deborah Gold, Chief Executive at NAT (National AIDS Trust), said:

"The Government’s continued silence on both the future of PrEP and the overdue local government funding settlement is inexcusable. Without these announcements local authorities have neither the time nor the resources necessary to plan the HIV prevention and sexual health services that are needed from April. It is no longer a case of being down to the wire, we are now well past it.

Deborah Gold, Chief Executive of NAT (National AIDS Trust), said: “We warmly welcome the green paper on prevention. With increasing demand for sexual health services and a vanishing pool of public health funding to deliver them, the proposed national strategy on sexual health is a desperately needed intervention in the deepening sexual health crisis. We further welcome the reiterated commitment to ending HIV transmission by 2030.

NHS England announced today that whilst the PrEP Impact trial will double the number of places on the trial in clinics outside London, local authority commissioners in London are still considering what proportion of the proposed additional places they wish to accept. Fifty per cent of PrEP Impact Trial places are for London clinics.

At least 11 of the 23 London clinics currently have no places available for gay and bisexual men. The result is men needing PrEP are being turned away. Some will go on to acquire HIV as a result.

Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock, will today announce committment to reach zero HIV transmission in England by 2030. The announcement will be made at the Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF), Evening Standard and Independent’s AIDSfree Cities Global Forum.

A proposal to double the number of people able to access PrEP (a highly effective HIV prevention pill) through the PrEP Impact Trial has been delayed by the trial oversight board.[i] This is despite the fact that NHS England has agreed to fund the additional 13,000 places. Currently, many clinics have no spaces for additional patients and are turning away people at high risk of HIV, some of whom are going on to acquire the virus.