The Ministry of Health (MOH) has started offering drugs to HIV negative men who irregularly engage in sex to prevent them from getting infected with the virus.
Dr Herbert Kadama, the Pre – Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) coordinator at the Ministry reveals that they first piloted this innovation in September last year with 841 men who have infrequent sexual intercourse but are at substantial risk of infection.
In this programme, which has been named Event Driven PrEP or ED-PrEP, men who are able to plan and delay sex for at least two hours are supposed to take two oral drugs before sex.
Kadama explains that after the two drugs, men can then take one tablet daily for two days after the sexual encounter.
He notes that this option is proving to be acceptable and convenient for men, especially those who have visiting girlfriends or sexual partners. By April, up to 4000 clients had signed up for this method that experts say will give men another option for HIV prevention that they are not required to use continuously.
While HIV prevalence is currently estimated at 5.1% in Uganda and much lower among men estimated at 4.3% among men, healthcare givers say they still struggle to ensure that men who get infected start treatment and remain in care to suppress their viral loads.
Because of this, according to Dr Daniel Byamukama who heads HIV Prevention at Uganda AIDS Commission any innovation made to prevent men from getting infected comes in handy as this means also the rate of young girls getting infected will indirectly be cut as men are largely the power holders when it comes to decisions about sex.
Figures by the Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) show that HIV incidence is still high among men, with up to 11,000 getting newly infected last year. Worse, 34% of the men surveyed reported having sex with a person who was neither their wife or a partner they lived with. Comparably, only 10 per cent of the women reported having such an arrangement in 2023.
Byamukama says these figures are worrying, especially since uptake for other male HIV prevention options is not impressive either.
For instance, for male condom use, only 3% of men in multiple sexual relationships reported to have used a condom during their most recent sexual encounter. The other method, which is the voluntary medical male circumcision that has been scientifically proven to prevent HIV infection by up to 60%, uptake is still low.
From 2010 to date, about six million men have been circumcised representing 56%.
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