Photo credit: Arne Hoel / World Bank

Reporting from the 9th IAS Conference on HIV Science in Paris, a new article in Medscape discusses how HIV care is improving, but still failing many. The Council’s Nanlesta Pilgrim notes the key role that physicians must play when expanding access to Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

For the first time in the history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, more than half the people in the world living with HIV have access to antiretroviral treatment. However, scale-up has been unequal. The Population Council, with support of others through the DREAMS initiative, assesses different aspects of approaches used to reduce HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women. The research includes a focus on how best to introduce PrEP by determining what works and what does not. For young women, emerging data show that when women know PrEP is effective, they use it more consistently.

"Physicians are crucial to the roll out and introduction of PrEP," said Nanlestra Pilgrim, PhD, from the Population Council in Washington, DC. "In the United States, it's still a relatively new intervention," she told Medscape Medical News, so it is key that physicians understand who should be offered the prophylaxis.

Read the full article on Medscape.