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”.

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.

NAT statement on universal availability to HIV prevention medication PrEP

Kat Smithson, Director of Policy at (National AIDS Trust), said:

“NAT stands alongside the doctors who deliver the services to provide PrEP, in calling for it to be universally available to all who need it.”

Lord Paddick has today spoken of his use of the HIV prevention drug PrEP in a personal story shared on the Prepster website.

In the post he tells of his enduring anxiety around HIV, stemming from the early days of the epidemic when he says he may have avoided HIV acquisition because he was “playing it straight” and married at the time.

The Northern Ireland Department of Health has announced a new £450K HIV Prevention Pilot to be funded through the Health Transformation Fund. Yusef Azad, Director of Strategy at NAT (National AIDS Trust), said:

NHS England has announced that from September pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) will be available through the NHS as part of a three-year trial. This announcement comes a year and a day after an historic win for NAT (National AIDS Trust) at the High Court that confirmed the NHS’s legal ability to fund the drug, which stops people from getting HIV.

The Health Secretary Vaughan Gething has announced a study to provide PrEP, the HIV prevention drug, to all those who need it.

Deborah Gold, Chief Executive at NAT, said:

JOINT PRESS RELEASE

Scotland first in UK to approve anti-HIV drug 

Today (Monday 10th April) Scotland becomes the first of the UK nations to approve the provision of PrEP (Pre Exposure Prophylaxis) by the NHS to prevent HIV.

Following a rigorous process the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) today announced that PrEP, the HIV prevention drug, has been deemed a cost-effective treatment to prevent the transmission of HIV and will be made available on the NHS in Scotland.