Citing think tank research, Health Ministry says govt can save RM47m if PrEP used to prevent HIV
KUALA LUMPUR, MARCH 2 — The Health Ministry said that the government can save RM47 million in treating HIV patients by implementing the preventive medicine Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) programme based on a research done by Centre of Excellence for Research in AIDS (CERIA).
Deputy Health Minister Lukanisman Awang Sauni said that the programme proposed by the government was meant to reduce the virus transmission that has affected many Malaysians, of which 69,589 people are currently living with HIV.
“More than a third, equivalent to 77 per cent, of new cases reported each year consist of young people aged between 20 to 39 years and more than 90 per cent are men.
“This also shows that exposure to HIV infection has started since school,” he said, adding that 3,177 new HIV cases were recorded last year alone.
Lukanisman also said that the ministry has engaged Islamic and other religious stakeholders to adopt abstinence treatment to abstain from addictive substances or behaviours.
“The Ministry of Health always prioritises prevention based on noble values such as abstinence, but recently, the issue of substance abuse presents a major challenge to existing prevention efforts.
“Thus, PrEP is an effective additional prevention method that needs to be provided as a supplement to existing prevention efforts such as abstinence advocacy, condoms, risk reduction, etc,” he said responding Perikatan Nasional's Kuala Langat MP Datuk Ahmad Yunus Hairi on the rationale of the government's PrEP pilot project in Parliament.
The prevention with PrEP drugs is temporary compared to treating people with HIV who have to take antiretroviral drugs for life and certainly cost more.
“In addition, if people living with HIV get AIDS complications and opportunistic diseases, treatment will be more expensive and may involve very high hospital and intensive care costs compared to the administration of PrEP medication which only costs RM320 per person for a period of one year,” he added.
Last year, Health Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa said that the government will carry out a pilot project regarding the use of the PrEP medicine in several hospitals to assess its effectiveness and safety in reducing the risk of HIV infection.
She said the pilot project was necessary before the drug is certified by the ministry for public consumption.
