“We are working with health boards to finalise plans to pilot a model that will provide more convenient access to PrEP in the community,” a Welsh government spokesperson yesterday (December 12) told C+D .
“The pilot, which we anticipate will begin in autumn 2025, will include exploring the role pharmacists providing Wales’ national pharmacist independent prescribing service might play in making PrEP more accessible,” they said.
Read more: Draft HIV guidance backs website selling PrEP for Bitcoin
It comes after the cabinet secretary for health and social care in Wales Jeremy Miles last month (November 18) said that “a model providing more convenient access to PrEP in the community will be piloted”.
He added that an “awareness-raising campaign” will also run in the spring so that “all those at risk know about PrEP and how to access it”.
“Make access even easier”
“Although the use of PrEP continues to grow, we can make access even easier,” Miles said.
“PrEP is predominately used by gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men but much less so by those in other at-risk groups,” he added, stressing that “making improvements to access will help address this”.
Read more: HIV: Government ‘exploring’ making PrEP available in pharmacies
And the “HIV action plan for Wales” – published in March last year – set out that “primary care will have a key role to play in the life course of HIV”.
“This will include support for prevention initiatives, normalising testing for HIV [and] supporting provision for PrEP,” it said.
Read more: Green Party pledges to make PrEP available in pharmacies and online
Meanwhile, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) last month raised concerns over guidance on the use of PrEP that directed patients “unable or unwilling” to access it on the NHS to a website “not regulated by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)”.
And the body highlighted that the website “gives the option of purchasing PreP via Bitcoin”, a cryptocurrency.
