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Half a million gay men across Europe miss out on HIV prevention tool

Gay newlyweds walk on a giant rainbow flag at a pro same-sex marriage part in Taiwan - REUTERS
Gay newlyweds walk on a giant rainbow flag at a pro same-sex marriage part in Taiwan - REUTERS

Around half a million gay men across Europe are missing out on a treatment that is proven to stop transmission of HIV and is a cornerstone of global prevention efforts.

A study of men who have sex with men across the 53 countries of the World Health Organization’s European region estimated that 500,000 men who have sex with men are unable to access PrEP but would take it if they could.

Sex between men is still the most common way for HIV to be spread in Europe, accounting for 38 per of all new HIV cases.

PrEP is seen as a key weapon in the global fight against the disease and has been shown to reduce the chances of someone picking up HIV through unprotected sex by nearly 90 per cent.

The WHO has been recommending that those at substantial risk of contracting HIV should be offered PrEP since 2015.

To assess how many gay and bisexual men were missing out on the treatment researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Public Health England and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control looked at data from an online survey of 128,000 gay and bisexual men from across the EU.

The study, published in the journal Eurosurveillance, compared the proportion of men who stated they were "very likely" to use PrEP if it were available with the proportion of those who currently use it.

The country with the largest number of men unable to access PrEP was Russia, where 44.8 per cent of those wanting to access the treatment were not able to get it. This is a worrying figure given the high rates of HIV in the country.

The country with the lowest gap was Portugal where just 4.3 per cent of men who have sex with men were unable to access the drug.

Across Europe as a whole 17.4 per cent of men were unable to access the preventive treatment –  this figure is based on an assumption that nearly three per cent of adult men in the EU are gay or bisexual.

The study found that lack of access was linked to whether PrEP was available free to those most at risk of contracting HIV.

In 2019, 14 out of 53 countries provided PrEP free – a significant increase from 2016 when just France provided the treatment free of charge.

In the UK, where PrEP is available on the NHS in Scotland and Northern Ireland but as part of a trial in England and Wales, around 25 per cent of men who want to get the treatment were unable to access it.

The government recently announced that the number of people on the trial would double from 13,000 to 26,000 but campaigners say a trial is not necessary as PrEP's efficacy has long been recognised.

Rosalie Hayes, senior policy and campaigns officer at the National Aids Trust and lead author of the study, said the findings should act as a wake-up call

“Although progress has been made in making reimbursed PrEP nationally available, our estimate that around half a million men who have sex with men are still unable to access PrEP despite being very likely to use it is very concerning. The longer the delay in access to PrEP for these men, the more HIV infections will occur," she said.

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