With over 3 600 Western Cape users, lenacapavir is “cool”
South Africa is rolling out lenacapavir, a new six-monthly injectable HIV prevention drug, to select government clinics. While supply is currently constrained, early adoption among young women in the Western Cape shows promise for HIV prevention strategies.
Why it matters
Long-acting injectables represent a major shift in HIV prevention, potentially increasing adherence and reducing infection rates in vulnerable populations.
Facebook 0 Tweet 0 Email 0 From counselling about small nodules to overcoming people’s fears of needles, Spotlight takes the pulse of a new HIV prevention injection’s rollout in the Western Cape.
At Cape Town’s Philippi Village, beside a rainbow-emblazoned mobile clinic, Olwam Plaatjie says she switched from the two-monthly cabotegravir HIV prevention injection to the six-monthly injectable lenacapavir. Despite small nodules forming at the two jab sites on her abdomen, the 20-year-old is delighted with the new HIV prevention medicine.
Plaatjie, who is from Crossroads and who started taking cabotegravir injections three years ago, says: “I see many people who are HIV positive. Many of them are girls. Guys often don’t even want to be tested; my boyfriend didn’t want to go for HIV tests. So that’s why I started to have a fear. I was like, you know, maybe there is something he is hiding.”
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