By Urn
A mobile application ‘PrEP Uganda’ can now be downloaded from the Google Play store for those who might need to get Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), a course of HIV drugs taken by HIV-negative people to prevent infection.
Studies have shown that PrEP reduces the risk of getting HIV through sex by about 99 per cent when taken consistently, thereby providing an effective biomedical prevention option for HIV-negative people at substantial risk of acquiring HIV infection.
The drug is recommended and popularized mainly among the most-at-risk population such as sex workers, discordant couples and men who have sex with men have until recently been only accessed at specific facilities across the country.
Although World Health Organisation guidelines recommend that PrEP should be made widely available, the drug which stops the virus from replicating in the body, is not available everywhere, even in countries where it has regulatory approval.
It’s on the basis of this that Charles Brown, the Executive Director of Preventive Care International (PCI), a Civil Society Organisation that advocates for access to HIV prevention innovations developed the app to ensure that the public can get information about the wonder pill.
