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This post was written by Yvette Raphael in South Africa a few days following the announcement of the FACTS 001 microbicide gel trial results. Yvette is a 2014 AVAC Fellow working at Johns Hopkins Health and Education in South Africa. She is a leader in South Africa’s HIV prevention movement for young women.
For years women’s failure to protect themselves from HIV was exacerbated by their inability to navigate through young womanhood. I fell into that same cycle: I did not negotiate my first sexual debut and not using a condom was surely not my choice. I now know that I was coerced into not using one. I learnt the hard way that that his compliments on my beauty were to make me feel OK about having unprotected sex with someone who knew he was HIV positive but not virally suppressed.
In 2010 the CAPRISA 004 trial showed a microbicide is possible. It was just the news I wanted to hear even if this news was almost 10 years too late for me and a marketable product would be even much later. A microbicide gel was one of the many prevention methods being tested and all were at different stages but I was particularly excited about this one for many reasons. The research for this was happening in South Africa, my country. The women who were in the trial represented me at the age I got infected and they would have gone through the same struggles as I did. If the gel worked for them, it would work in the South African context and most likely work for woman elsewhere in the world. What was particularly exiting was the regimen, in which the gel is delivered by applicator before and after sex. I thought of this as a power tool for women—something women could put in their handbag, almost like a Taser, and protect themselves. I was excited that our government made an investment in the research and I was excited that the team of lead researchers were women who I looked up to.
I waited for the results of the FACTS 001 trial results like an excited toddler would wait for Santa Clause. Then, in February, the call came directly from fellow advocates attending the session where the long-awaited results were released at the 2015 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Seattle. The results were flat. A microbicide gel in an applicator used before and after sex did not work for women. That was certainly not the news I wanted to hear. My heart sank. I wanted to run away. I wanted to hide. So many women were looking forward to this. The emails started, the press releases, the commentary from all angles. Everyone had something to say except the women.
I was following CROI with keen interest mostly for the FACTS results. But like with soccer, when your team loses, you support your next favourite team. I started to follow what was coming out of CROI about PrEP.
The Partners Demonstration Project among discordant heterosexual couples showed that PrEP and treatment in couples reduced the negative partner’s risk of HIV by 96 percent. Both the PROUD study in the UK and IPERGAY in France, looking at PrEP in gay men, showed an 86 percent reduction in risk.
What does all this mean for women? Would PrEP be the option that will finally liberate young women and girls? How do we advocate for PrEP to be made available to women in South Africa—where HIV prevalence is nearly twice that of men?