Here are six ways to improve HIV prevention pill uptake among Zimbabwean young women: Image: Adobe stock
Research reveals that six out of seven new HIV infections among 15-19-year-olds in Sub Saharan Africa are among girls.
Here are six ways to improve HIV prevention pill uptake among Zimbabwean young women: Image: Adobe stock
Adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa have a very high risk of acquiring HIV. The latest global AIDS update report suggests that a staggering six out of seven new infections among 15-19-year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa are among girls.
Entrenched gender inequalities make young women and girls more vulnerable to coercive behaviour that leaves them unable to negotiate safe sex.
But there is a method for adolescent girls and young women to protect themselves from HIV without having to convince a partner to use a condom at the time of sex. Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is a pill containing antiretroviral drugs that can help prevent HIV. If taken consistently, PrEP can reduce the risk of sexually transmitted HIV infection by about 99%.
HIV prevention medication has been part of HIV prevention efforts since around 2014. Globally, PrEP has contributed to declines in new HIV infections among high-risk populations. But this does not seem to be the case for adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa.
In a recent study, my colleagues and I at the Manicaland Centre for Public Health Research interviewed healthcare providers in eastern Zimbabwe to understand the low uptake of PrEP and what they would recommend to improve it.
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We asked 12 healthcare providers about their experiences of making HIV prevention services available to young people. We asked them specifically about PrEP. We also invited the healthcare providers to share their top three recommendations for improving access to PrEP for young women.
This is the first study of its kind to focus on the perspectives of healthcare providers in southern Africa. Considering their perspectives is particularly important. Healthcare providers are not only at the front-line in the delivery of PrEP. They often live in the same community and understand the socio-cultural contexts of their clients. This combination of experiences is valuable and must inform future programming.
Their recommendations point to six actions.
A recent report by the Zimbabwe Ministry of Health and Child Care found young women to have an HIV incidence more than nine times higher than that of their male peers. HIV prevention service planners looking to increase access and uptake of PrEP among adolescent girls and young women in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in the region must take heed of these findings.
Many more actions will of course be needed for the effective rollout of PrEP for adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa.
However, the six actions emerging from our interviews with healthcare workers in Zimbabwe highlight solutions to some key challenges.
Morten Skovdal, Associate professor in Health Psychology, University of Copenhagen
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.