HIV Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) is an effective HIV prevention tool recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) for all potential exposures. However, access to and uptake of PEP remains low, resulting in missed opportunities to prevent new HIV transmissions. While HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has gained significant attention over the past decade, HIV PEP, despite being available much longer as a prevention tool than HIV PrEP, has received less interest. This is particularly concerning, as PEP offers important additional prevention benefits as part of combination prevention, especially with the expanded access to PrEP.
This policy paper examines the key challenges and gaps in accessing HIV PEP and presents a set of recommendations aimed at improving its accessibility, availability, affordability, and acceptability.
