Although seven African countries provided data key for FDA’s approval of an injectable HIV prevention drug, Africa may face a long wait to get the drug at an affordable price.
Melb Simiyu, an HIV prevention officer at a support organization for sex workers here, says most of her clients have asked when a drug called CAB-LA will become available. Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2021, the HIV prevention drug could drastically reduce infections among marginalized groups like the one she works with.
Two oral versions of PrEP are already available, both as a daily pill. They have been shown to reduce HIV infection in groups at high risk, including sex workers and men who have sex with men , by up to 99%—but only when taken consistently, which many users find hard. CAB-LA promises to be more effective because adherence is much easier.
But all are waiting to find out how many vials will be available and at what cost. Viiv has priced injectable PrEP at $22,000 for a year’s supply in the United States. For the world’s poorest countries, that figure needs to come down to the current price of generic oral PrEP, less than $100 annually, Kavanagh says. “If it’s a lot more than that, we’re sunk,” he says; that would make CAB-LA an “inequality booster.
“I appreciate from the activist side that there’s always a level of impatience,” Garges says, but negotiations with MPP started just 6 months after CAB-LA received its first regulatory approval. “I don’t view this as any kind of delayed approach.”
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