HIV Infection: Drugs

(asked on 23rd March 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will estimate how many at-risk men in which areas will (a) not receive and (b) receive pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV in each of the next five years.


Answered by
 Portrait
Jane Ellison
This question was answered on 11th April 2016

Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) is a new use of HIV drugs which has shown clinical effectiveness in research trials at preventing HIV in people at high risk of getting HIV such as men who have sex with men (MSM) and people with HIV-positive partners. The drug used in the trials, Truvada, is not yet licenced for use as PrEP. Public Health England (PHE) has undertaken modelling work looking at cost-effectiveness of PrEP. Much depends on the price of the drugs and HIV prevalence in the target group. However, as with any new intervention, PrEP now needs to be properly assessed in relation to cost effectiveness to see how it could be commissioned in the most sustainable and integrated way and how it compares with other cost-effective approaches. The Department is considering this with PHE, NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

A wide range of stakeholders were included in the initial work by NHS England on PrEP including the Department of Health, PHE, the Medical Research Council, voluntary organisations and Genitourinary and HIV Clinicians. NHS England will be building on the work to date by making available up to £2 million over the next two years to run a number of early implementer sites. These will be undertaken in conjunction with PHE.

The data on new HIV diagnosis is available in table 1a in the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/469321/National_Tables20102015.xls

As part of the PROUD study, PHE has assessed how many men may be considered high risk but it is not possible to estimate how many would seek to access PrEP.

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