In October 2023, SSLN in collaboration with WHO and UNAIDS, convened the largest PrEP meeting for countries in ESA and WCA. The meeting held in Accra, Ghana brought together over 105 participants from 19 countries, as well as regional and global stakeholders.

Purpose of the meeting

The purpose of the collaborative PrEP Regional meeting was to bring together stakeholders and experts involved in PrEP programming in the region to accelerate the scale up and impact of PrEP in Africa through improving its access, uptake and effectiveness. It was anticipated that this meeting participants would foster collaboration, knowledge sharing and strengthen implementation efforts.

‍Meeting Highlights

The 3-day meeting saw stakeholders discuss barriers to scaling up PrEP as well as sharing of best practices on PrEP implementation. Stakeholders were able to visit 5 PrEP implementing sites to learn about various aspects of PrEP implementation.

Key highlights included a discussion on the global status of PrEP implementation, with speaker after speaker calling for the need to meet the gap in achieving PrEP targets, increasing choice of PrEP products to meet the needs of diverse populations in need.  WHO gave updates on some of the WHO approved products including, oral PrEP, Event Driven PrEP, Dapivirine Ring and Injectable PrEP.

‍

“We have a PrEP Gap and are short of the global target.  We missed the target in 2020 and our current target is short.  The forecast is that we scale up PrEP in order to achieve the targets” Agnes Chetty - WHO

‍

UNAIDS shared innovations in PrEP programming and highlighted key things to consider including client centered approaches to improve continuation, understanding risk for tailored approaches.

There were presentations on country promising best practices from Eswatini, Zimbabwe and South Africa.  The interactive marketplace session showcased country experiences in PrEP implementation from Kenya, South Africa, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia.  The other highlight of the meeting was the presentations of community voices from AGYW, young men and Key Populations.

The meeting culminated in a strong take-away message from participants highlighting the need for countries to understand their epidemic and context and adapt/adopt the appropriate HIV prevention strategies for their context with sustainability at the core of their strategy.  The stakeholders reiterated that there are many tools in the HIV Prevention tool box and that PrEP should be viewed as one such tool.  For next steps, participants proposed to adopt a multisectoral approach to HIV prevention to ensure effectiveness and sustainability of the response as well as embracing PrEP as one of the tools in our prevention toolbox.  It was also agreed that there is a need to think about prevention from a total market approach – segmenting prevention options based on who needs what and who is willing and able to pay for what intervention.

Finally, participants requested the global partners to support countries to establish drug resistance monitoring systems and provide guidance on monitoring and evaluation of PrEP while bringing innovation to condoms and PrEP for sustainability.

All in all it was a great 3 days full of learning, connecting and gaining new insights.

‍

Workshop presentations are available through the document library and event photos are available through the video library.

The full workshop report can be accessed here