November 1, 2016
As PrEP begins to reach communities throughout the world, access to this groundbreaking HIV prevention medication cannot be taken for granted. In many cities and rural areas in Africa, PrEP is still a foreign idea instead of an exciting new approach that can save lives. This blog is the latest in our series of updates on PrEP advocacy in Africa. This month, we are in Zambia and our focus is on a coalition focused on key populations (those considered to be at high risk for HIV), and it just kicked off its advocacy work.
While the gay community in the US strongly advocates for PrEP and backs education campaigns to reach those at high risk of HIV, the gay communities in African countries, and other places with gay populations that are mostly not white, have yet to show this kind of support and enthusiasm.
This has left a majority of Africa’s gay men without knowledge of or access to PrEP. And even those who do know about it are unsure what steps to take or what message to share with their friends. But the good news is—this is changing very rapidly. The voices of gay men in Africa are raising questions now about PrEP, creating platforms for advocacy, forming strategies for creating demand and working with national governments to develop guidance for implementation. Just last month the PrEP train stopped over in Uganda and Kenya where gay men in those countries came together to create an advocacy platform focused on rolling out PrEP to at-risk populations.
In October, PrEP advocacy picked up in Zambia. Friends of Rianka, Trans Bantu and Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign (TALC) worked together, with support from AVAC, to convene a multistakeholder meeting on PrEP.
The meeting, which took place on October 10 in Lusaka, included different stakeholders from communities of men who have sex with men (MSM) and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans & intersex (LGBTI) people. The participants discussed the current national context for rolling out PrEP for MSM in Zambia. The group identified the need to develop a strategy (with division of labor, resource needs, etc.) with a focus on raising awareness, creating demand and policy advocacy, all aimed at winning increased access to PrEP among MSM in Zambia. The meeting, also attended by government and donor agencies, presented an opportunity for the community to create an advocacy strategy that goes beyond PrEP and MSM, to one that touches on other biomedical interventions for HIV prevention within key populations in Zambia—a gap everyone in the room thought needed to be filled.
The group identified some critical steps for rolling out PrEP in Zambia:
- Revise The 2017 National AIDS Strategic Framework (NASF) guidelines and align them with recommendations related to PrEP in Zambia, developed from this day’s consultative meeting.
- Prioritize existing funding for key populations to support access to PrEP for MSM and LGBTI.
- Use existing knowledge of PrEP to inform next advocacy steps. Advocate for PrEP uptake as an entry point for other services such as Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT).
After identifying these steps, a nine-person Zambia Key Populations Biomedical Advocacy group was formed and will carry out recommendations developed below:
- Engage governments to support the uptake of PrEP
- Collaborate with health service providers to develop a strategy for the provision of PrEP
- LGBTI community in Zambia to set PrEP literacy as a top proirity
- Consultations with key population constituencies in all of Zambia’s districts
- Demand creation
- Create PrEP champions who will act as PrEP Peer Educators
This group will be working in the coming days and weeks with the government and donor agencies to implement these recommendations. We are very excited to be supporting these initiatives, in partnership with amfAR, and led by African gay men.
We know that when people have information and knowledge about an HIV prevention tool, they take action. Early in the epidemic, the government and donors supported prevention efforts in the MSM communities around condom education. PrEP is no different. African gay men need to be provided with information that is culturally sensitive. New prevention campaigns, targeted just for them, are needed. They need the financial and moral commitment of the society around them, to support efforts to educate their communities about all available prevention options, including PrEP.
Often this work involves the patience to move one step at a time, sometimes falling back before heading forward again. In Zambia, a group of dedicated MSM activists just took several long strides forward all at once, and we look forward to being there as they round the corner, bringing PrEP with them to Zambia’s gay community.
Stay tuned.