Being infected with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) was known to be an extreme threat. Having no cure nor a vaccine, roughly 1.2 million people living in the US are infected.
It seemed impossible that humanity can defeat HIV. But thanks to Yahoo Finance, we now know that the world has a drug capable of reducing the chances of getting infected with HIV by 99%. Furthermore, it will be totally free for those who are insured in the US.
Meet PrEP, the HIV prevention pill
PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) is the life-changing drug in question. The federal government informed health insurers that all medical expenses that are associated with PrEP, including the medication itself, has to be covered without cost sharing.
In other words, all you need is medical insurance in order to benefit from the PrEP pill. If it doesn’t apply to you, you might consider getting yourself insurance ASAP. Not only that it doesn’t cost much, but having access to PrEP could soon become significantly more difficult without insurance. The Gilead company aims for policy changes that are expected to drain funding from frontline clinics that serve low-income communities.
Jim Pickett from AIDS Foundation Chicago declared for NBC:
It’s going to put a lot of our programs in serious harm’s way at best,
Some of them will be decimated and destroyed.
According to HIV.gov, the human immunodeficiency virus still has a disproportionate impact on certain populations, particularly ethnic and racial minorities and gay, bisexual, and other men who engage in sexual relationships with people of the same gender. The same source reveals that in 2019 alone, an estimated 34,800 infections with HIV occurred in the US.
Luckily enough, HIV can’t be transmitted easily from one person to another. Since the virus lives in the blood and in some of the body fluids from a person, one of these fluids from someone infected has to get into somebody else’s blood for the transmission to happen.
