Number of Registered PrEP Users in Brazil Increases 38 Percent in Five Months

By Arkady Petrov

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The total number of people registered to benefit from prevention through Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), a drug preventing HIV infection, increased by 38 percent in five months. The treatment has been available since January 2018 in the Unified Health System (SUS). Since then, 11,034 people have been registered, 4,152 of them between January and May of this year, according to the Ministry of Health.

The “HIV pill” is a combination of drugs: tenofovir (300mg) + truvada (200mg). Prevention against the virus is provided through a daily dose. The most vulnerable groups began to have access to PrEP in the public health system in Brazil: gays, men who engage in sex with other men, sex workers, transgender men and women, and crossdressers.

In 2017, the Ministry of Health initially released the pill to 7,000 people. Twelve cities were given priority: Porto Alegre, Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza, Recife, Manaus, Brasília, Florianópolis, Salvador, and Ribeirão Preto. The selection was based on a higher incidence of the disease. Later, PrEP was expanded to other parts of Brazil.

Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis was already in use in other countries, such as the United States. Since 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended prevention for these same groups. Studies show an efficiency rate above 90 percent. By the end of 2016, over 100,000 people had used the pill.

Gays and men who engage in sex with other men are among those who have most subscribed to the measure in Brazil — there were 2,898 new registrations this year. At the other end of the spectrum are crossdressers, trans men and women, representing less than five percent of all PrEP users. Since early 2019, 30 crossdressers, 162 transgender women, and ten transgender men have joined the prevention program.

Even though this figure may seem small, it is difficult to estimate whether these populations are underrepresented in the prevention policy. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), demographic surveys do not yet account for the number of crossdressers, trans women, and trans men in Brazil.