THE Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness (WCDHW) confirmed that nearly nine in ten people who choose the lenacapavir injection are first-time users of the long-acting HIV prevention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lenacapavir is an antiretroviral drug designed to both treat and prevent HIV. More importantly, lenacapavir is not a vaccine, but a highly-effective HIV prevention medicine.<\/p>\n
According to the Department, between 8 June and 24 July, 2 339 lenacapvir injections were administered across 22 public health facilities in the Metro.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of the injections administered, 2 049 (87.6 percent) were people who were not previously taking oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), which means the programme is reaching thousands of residents who were previously not using long-acting HIV prevention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Besides lenacapavir, a twice-a-year injection, PrEP can also be taken as a daily prescription pill, which has been available in South Africa since 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The MEC for Health and Wellness, Mireille Wenger, said the early results demonstrate the value of giving people more choice in how they protect themselves against HIV.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wenger said: \u201cOne of our greatest opportunities to reduce new HIV infections is to ensure that more people who are at risk choose an effective prevention option.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is particularly encouraging about these early results is that almost 88 percent of people receiving lenacapavir are new to PrEP.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means we are expanding access to HIV prevention and reaching people who may previously have found daily medication difficult or simply were not using PrEP at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said by giving people a long-acting prevention option that is more convenient, it removes barriers to HIV prevention and gives more residents a greater choice of options to protect themselves.<\/p>\n
Wenger said it was for these reasons that the introduction of lenacapavir is an important milestone for the Western Cape.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHealthcare workers report that many patients have chosen lenacapavir because receiving one injection every six months is easier than remembering to take a tablet every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the Department, the rollout has shown encouraging uptake among women who remain the most at-risk group. During the reporting period, 162 pregnant women initiated lenacapavir, while a further seven antenatal patients switched from oral PrEP to injectable PrEP, strengthening HIV prevention during pregnancy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness (WCDHW) confirmed that nearly nine in ten people who choose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[294519,294516,49,48,285534,5831,84,94568,1842,294522,294514,294521,294515,377,9929,294513,294517,171,2727,294520,294518,5685,166796,294512],"class_list":["post-845970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-186-administrationsphumlani-clinic","tag-192-administrationskhayelitsha","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-community-health-centre","tag-department-of-health","tag-health","tag-healthcare-access","tag-hiv","tag-hiv-prevention-injection","tag-https-iol-co-za-news-south-africa-2026-06-09-western-cape-launches-lenacapavir-for-enhanced-hiv-prevention","tag-long-acting-injectable","tag-mec-for-health-and-wellness","tag-medication","tag-metro","tag-mireille-wenger","tag-nolungile-community-day-centre","tag-people","tag-public-health","tag-robin-franckeiol-co-za","tag-site-b","tag-south-africa","tag-western-cape","tag-western-cape-department-of-health-and-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}