The application for PrEP has risen sharply in the city in the past year. PrEP is a tablet that you take as a preventive measure to prevent you from becoming infected with HIV. The GGD provides the medicine to three thousand people, but at least half of that number is still on a waiting list. This worries the GGD: “Everyone must be able to be protected against HIV.”
To draw more attention to PrEP, the GGD will perform together with artist Kiri Mioki during the Pride. “Go PrEP, one tablet a day. Go PrEP, and a big smile”, is the chorus of Kiri’s song. Kiri Mioki also uses PrEP: “It’s a drug you take to protect yourself against one of the worst STDs out there, I think it’s worth writing a song about. It gives you freedom to have sex with less danger.”
GGD doctor Kenneth Yap also thinks the drug is an important development: “It has caused fewer people with HIV and AIDS, it gives people a positive sex experience and it is very accessible.” The government has given a number of GGD locations in the Netherlands the option of providing the drug from 2019, and Amsterdam will be able to provide three thousand people with PrEP from that moment on. Most people get the drug through the GGD, other ways are through the GP or private clinics.
Long waiting lists
“A total of five thousand people in Amsterdam now use PrEP,” says Yap. The GGD is now at the maximum. “This has made the waiting list enormous in the past year. Half the number of people using PrEP are still on the waiting list. We are concerned about that.”
Kiri was able to take the pill in time, but unfortunately people around him did not: “They got HIV before the drug was available here. I discussed with them what they thought of this cheerful song about the drug, they They all thought it was great that attention is being paid to prevention in this way.”
The song is written to the tune of the song Go West by The Village People. “I knew right away that it would be, it was written in the 1970s and then covered. Then we were in the middle of the AIDS crisis. This is just a new chapter in AIDS history.”
The GGD and Kiri will be on a boat together on Saturday 6 August to draw attention to the subject. Three GGD doctors, including Yap, will present a new version of The Village People together with the artist. “It is exciting, but above all very fun and important to do this.”
The reason is clear: the GGD wants to call on people to learn other ways to obtain PrEP: “such as the GP or private institutions.” But it is also an appeal to politicians: “We need more money, because we need more places to help people.”