Over the next two years, the municipality will allocate 250,000 euros for PrEP treatments, the medication you can take preventively to prevent an HIV infection. This means that another 200 Amsterdammers can make use of a PrEP treatment. At the moment, 1600 people are still on the waiting list: “It’s very frustrating.”
Richard Keldoulis has been using PrEP since 2016. “Then I had to get it from Thailand,” he says. “It has been available in the Netherlands since 2019. You can get it through the GP or the GGD. Some GPs do not want to prescribe it because of moral objections or because it is not part of their basic package. Then you have to go to the GGD, but there is a huge waiting list,” he says.
In recent years, HIV infections have continued to decrease in the city. “Last year we made 44 diagnoses and in 2020 there were 52,” says GGD doctor Kenneth Yak. “That decrease is partly due to the use of PrEP. But we are full. We have reached maximum capacity. That means that we cannot accept new participants. This has led to a waiting list that has now risen to 1600.”
200 new spots
The municipality wants zero new HIV infections by 2026. That is why 250,000 euros will be invested over the next two years, which means that another 200 Amsterdammers will be able to receive PrEP treatment. “We are very grateful and happy of course, but it is a drop in the ocean,” says Keldoulis. “A lot more needs to be made available. I know someone who contracted HIV this summer while on the waiting list.”
Keldoulis: “We’ve been working for 40 years to end the AIDS epidemic. And now we have a drug that can do that, and we’re not doing that because we’re not making PrEP widely available. That’s frustrating,” he says .