'It's so overdue': Advocates relieved Manitoba now covering HIV prevention drug after years of pressure

Sexual and community health experts are relieved the Manitoba government has agreed to cover the cost of a drug that prevents HIV after years of reluctance to do so.

Manitoba was the only province or territory in Canada that wasn't already covering pre-exposure prophylaxis, commonly known as PrEP, before the government announced Friday that the drug has been added to the provincial formulary.

"It's so overdue," said Rusty Souleymanov, an assistant professor in the faculty of social work at the University of Manitoba. "The fact that we were remaining the only province ... it was really unacceptable."

PrEP reduces the risk of contracting HIV from sex by 99 per cent, according to the Centre for Disease Control.

Souleymanov is director of Village Lab at the U of M and co-authored a report earlier this year called The Manitoba Two-Spirit, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Men's Health Study.

One of the recommendations from that report was that the Manitoba government cover PrEP for 2SGBQ+ men.

Souleymanov and others surveyed 365 Manitobans from those communities. One of the largest barriers to getting PrEP was cost: about 59 per cent of respondents said they couldn't afford it.

Without provincial funding or private insurance, the drug runs between $200 and $300 a month. Some anti-retroviral drugs used to treat HIV are covered and cost over $1,000 a month.

Other barriers also surfaced in the research.

Over 80 per cent reported a clear understanding of what PrEP is. That wasn't a huge surprise because gay and bisexual men have been "bombarded with info on HIV prevention," said Souleymanov.

But roughly 20 per cent didn't know much or anything about the drug. That's an issue, because gay and bisexual men, as well as Indigenous people and some other communities of colour, are over represented in the HIV epidemic, said Souleymanov.

"Now that PrEP is covered, that doesn't mean that the fight is over," he said. "We still have work remaining to do in terms of improving knowledge."

Some of those efforts to improve knowledge will have to be targeted at health-care professionals.

More than two-thirds of respondents experienced some form of discrimination in health-care settings in the previous two years.