PrEP is now approved in Canada. What happens now?

published on March 2, 2016 by Niko Bell, in Daily Xtra

Advocates say real access to Truvada is a long way away

With an anticlimactic shuffle of paperwork, Health Canada quietly added a paragraph to the online documentation for Truvada on Feb 28, 2016, opening the door to a new era of HIV prevention in Canada.

It’s a moment that doctors, scientists and activists concerned with gay men’s health have been anxiously awaiting for years.

But there’s no call to get too excited yet. Experts say there’s a heaping pile of work to do before any real change happens. In fact, in the days following Health Canada’s announcement, almost nothing about Canadians’ access to Truvada will change at all.

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Dr Julio Montaner, a venerable Canadian HIV researcher and the director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV and AIDS, laughs off the idea that doctors would read the guidelines so literally.

“If you are using condoms, if you know the status of your partner, if your partner’s HIV is suppressed, you don’t need Truvada,” he says. “We are all very careful to say that PrEP should be part of a prevention package, but if you avail yourself of optimal prevention, you don’t need PrEP.”

He thinks doctors should read the guidelines as encouragement to combine PrEP with condom use and treatment as prevention to treat whole communities. But doctors should not hesitate to consider Truvada if gay men have multiple partners or don’t use condoms, Montaner says.

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Julio Montaner

BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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PrEP is now approved in Canada. What happens now?

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