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South Africa, along with the rest of the world, is currently battling COVID-19, but we’ve been at war with another deadly virus for far longer.

Just as earlier in the week brought great news regarding a COVID-19 vaccine, so too is there great news on the HIV front, with Wits researchers announcing a “breakthrough” in HIV prevention in women.

GroundUp reports:

The initial results from clinical trials show that an injection once every eight weeks is 90% more effective than taking a daily pill to prevent HIV among women.

The trial was led by Dr Sinead Delany-Moretlwe, director of research at the Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (RHI) at the University of the Witwatersrand.

A comparison was made between a new injectable preventative drug given once every eight weeks (cabotegravir) and a daily pill (oral tenofovir/emtricitabine) currently used for HIV prevention…

Delany-Moretlwe said during a press conference on Zoom that among all the participants there were 38 HIV infections over 24 months, of which 34 were among the women who were given the pills and four among those who received the injections. She said it is much easier to take an injection, which is discreet, than to take a pill every day.

She went on to say that the success of the trial could lead to a worldwide reduction in the number of HIV infections.

Professor Helen Rees, Executive Director of Wits RHI, said the results of the study are “a massive step forward” and a “major breakthrough”.

Ultimately, in order for the treatment to be effective, it will need to be affordable. which is something that the company responsible for producing cabotegravir has said it’s committed to doing.

Before the product can be made publicly available, there are a number of regulatory approval steps to go through, but we’ll take our good news updates where we can get them.

Read more on the study on GroundUp here.

[source:groundup]