Photo Credit: Bowonpat Sakaew

Considerable scale-up is needed to achieve the 2025 goals for HIV PrEP, according to research published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Megan E. Peck, PhD, and colleagues examined progress toward the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) goal of 21.2 million persons using PrEP globally in 2025. The researchers noted that the CDC supported 856,816 PrEP initiations in 2023, representing nearly one-quarter of the 3.5 million persons globally who used PrEP that year. During 2017-2023, the CDC supported PrEP initiations for nearly 2.3 million persons, who were almost all in sub-Saharan Africa (96.0%). Overall, 64.0% were female and 44.9% were aged 15-24. For the 7-year period, the CDC achieved 118.7% of its PrEP initiation targets. The majority of those initiating PrEP in sub-Saharan Africa were female sex workers, while most in Southeast Asia, Eurasia, and the Americas were men who have sex with men. “Further expansion of PrEP programs that address barriers to the initiation, including stigma, lack of awareness of PrEP services, and low-risk perception among populations at high risk, could increase the number of persons initiating or continuing PrEP,” the authors wrote.