• J Coll Physicians Surg Pak · Sep 2023

    Assessment of Acceptability of Pre-exposure Prophylaxis for HIV Prevention Among Men Who Sex with Men and Transgender Community in Pakistan.

    • Usman Ali, Safdar Kamal Pasha, Rupa Patel, Heather-Marie Schmidt, and Arshad Altaf.
    • Department of Testing Prevention and Populations Unit, UNAIDS Asia Pacific Regional, WHO, Geneva, Switzerland.
    • J Coll Physicians Surg Pak. 2023 Sep 1; 33 (9): 983989983-989.

    ObjectiveTo assess the level of acceptability of oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transwomen (TW) in Pakistan.Study DesignCross-sectional study. Place and Duration of the Study: Online study portal from September to November 2021.MethodologyThe study participants were recruited through snowball sampling. Consenting individuals who were >13 years and were identified as MSM or TW were included in the study. Data were analysed using SPSS version 25. Frequencies, percentages and correlation coefficients were computed.ResultsA total of 347 participants were recruited. The mean age of all participants was 29.8 ± 6.7 years. Fifty-eight (19.7%) of the participants had chemsex with amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) at least once in preceding six months of the study, and 58 (19.7%) had a sexually transmitted infection (STI) in preceding six months whereas 10 (3.4%) participants had used drugs via injection. Two hundred and thirty-eight (72%) of the participants were aware of PrEP, 30 (11.7%) had used PrEP in the past, and 3.88% were currently using PrEP. The willingness to use PrEP, free of cost, was shown by 300 participants (86.45%) and by 180 (54.5%), if available at a low cost.ConclusionThere was a high prevalence of risk factors posing them at considerable risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The majority was aware of PrEP for HIV prevention. The willingness to use PrEP was high when PrEP was offered free of cost but dropped down when participants were asked to pay for PrEP. Based on this finding, PrEP should be available free of cost at the community preferred outlets.Key WordsGay, Men who have sex with men, HIV, Pre-exposure prophylaxis Pakistan, Transwomen, Chemsex, People living with HIV.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…