SECUNDA, South Africa (AP) — Growing up witnessing the devastating effects of HIV in her family and community in South Africa pushed Olwam Plaatjie to start using preventive HIV medications three years ago.“Sometimes they’d lose weight, they would get sick and have to go to the clinic, and I didn’t want that for me,” she told The Associated Press. “I’d see the people I live with taking (antiretroviral) pills for HIV every day, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle that life.”The 19-year-old is one of thousands of South Africans who signed up for clinical trials of lenacapavir, a highly effective, twice-yearly injectable prevention drug that addresses the drawbacks of daily oral prevention pills.Despite night sweats and other side effects, she is continuing with the medication after South Africa this month became one of the world’s first countries to introduce it.
President Cyril Ramaphosa told a stadium crowd at the launch of the drug’s rollout that lenacapavir is a “turning point” in South Africa, which carries the highest burden of HIV globally.But health advocates say the country deserves many more doses after South Africa’s central role in the work that brought the promising drug to the world.
