‘No more than a drop in the ocean’: this drug could end new HIV infections in Eswatini – why isn’t there enough?

The southern Africa country has the world’s highest prevalence of HIV but the amount of lenacapavir reaching it is too small to reach all those at risk

I

f Precious asks her client to use a condom, she can charge him 100 lilangeni – about £4.50. If she agrees not to use one, she can charge double. The financial incentive for sex workers in Eswatini not to use protection is obvious – as is the risk, in a country where one in four people are infected with HIV.

Last year, Precious visited a clinic with five other sex workers to get tested. Four of them had the virus.

Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, has the world’s highest HIV prevalence. It records about 4,000 new HIV infections a year among its population of 1.2 million.