South Africa sets launch date for HIV prevention drug Lenacapavir rollout
While delivering the Department of Health's budget vote, the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, announced that South Africa will officially launch the groundbreaking HIV drug, Lenacapavir, in Mpumalanga on 5 June 2026.
A nurse draws a blood sample from a child for an HIV test at a clinic in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg. Image credit: Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo
Lenacapavir is administered via injection twice a year, offering patients six months of continuous protection per dose and offers a welcome relief from daily pills or the bi-monthly injections.
Decisively dealing with HIV
“In the next two weeks, we will be delivering Lenacapavir stocks to depots and health facilities. We will be starting with 360 health facilities in the high-burden districts of the country.
“We have specifically targeted the following categories of our population for prioritisation: Adolescent girls and young women up to age 24 years, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, female sex workers, men-having- sex-with-men, transgender people and injecting drug users,” Motsoaledi explained.
The minister insisted that South Africa is well on the way to dealing with HIV decisively.
“Honourable members, we are in a position where we dare say we can eliminate HIV/Aids as a public health threat.
"All we have to do is to work hard and work hard together as South Africans, motivated and bound together by a common destiny.
“As a country, we know what is at stake because we had achieved results which are there for everybody to see,” he said.
South Africa has the world’s biggest HIV counselling, testing and treatment campaign, which has borne the following results:
- Increased life expectancy in our country to 66.9 years, by 2025, from a low of 54 years in 2010.
- Reduced maternal mortality to 89 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2020, from a high of 240 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010.
- Reduced under-five mortality rate to 27.7 per 1,000 live births by 2025 from a high of 74.3 in 2010.
- Reduced incidence of TB to 4217 per 100,000 population from a high of 988 per 100,000 population in 2015.
“We achieved all these by taming the scourge of HIV/AIDS. Imagine what we can achieve if we work hard together once more,” he said.
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Tackling cervical cancer
Motsoaledi warned that cancer is fast becoming South Africa’s “new HIV pandemic”.
“Cervical cancer is the second biggest killer of women after breast cancer.
“The sooner we do something about it, the better. Scientific advances have now put us in a position where it is possible to eliminate cervical cancer.
"The WHO has delivered a formula called 90-70-90 along the same lines as the HIV elimination formula of 95-95-95.
“The first 90 is that 90% of young girls between the ages of 9–15 years must receive the HPV vaccine.
"The 70 in the middle means that 70% of women by the age of 35 years and again by the age of 45 years need to be screened with new DNA-based technologies.
"The last 90 means that 90% of women with advanced cancer, i.e. stage three and stage four, need to be put on treatment,” he explained.
The minister said that South Africa has had to modify this formula to suit the country’s environment.
“We are forced by our unique and unwelcome position of being the world's highest HIV/Aids burdened country. In our country, 65% of all the women with diagnosed cervical cancer are also HIV+.
“Hence, we extended our age cohort to start 10 years earlier and end 10 years later than the WHO determination.
"In our 70% formula, we will start at 25 years and end at 55 years, while the WHO formula starts at 35 years and ends at 45 years,” he said.