Nairobi — In June 2017 the World Health Organization (WHO) updated their list of medicines deemed essential, these are drugs that every person should have access to, should they need it, no matter where they are. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to prevent HIV infection made it to that list. Kenya is the second country on the continent, after South Africa, to have introduced pre-exposure prophylaxis guidelines.
About 1.5 million people are living with HIV in Kenya and about one million are on treatment. In an effort to to prevent new HIV infections and to improve the quality of life of millions of Kenyans, in July 2016, the Ministry of Health, released HIV treatment and prevention guidelines recommending provision of immediate initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) and PrEP use among uninfected partners at high risk of contracting HIV. One of the biggest barrier to PrEP implementation across targeted population in Kenya has been the stigma associated with pills, mainly because of lack of accurate information.