The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines oral pre-exposure prophylaxis of HIV infection (PrEP) as the use of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs by people who do not have HIV infection in order to prevent the acquisition of HIV and recommends that people of substantial risk should be offered PrEP. WHO recommends offering PrEP to all population groups at substantial risk of HIV infection.  PrEP is considered a key prevention modality and should be an additional prevention choice in a comprehensive package of services that also includes HIV testing, Screening and management of sexually transmitted infections, counselling, male and female condoms, lubricants, ARV treatment for partners with HIV infection, voluntary medical male circumcision and harm reduction interventions for people who use drugs.

In the English-speaking Caribbean, only The Bahamas and Barbados have developed and implemented PrEP programmes. In both cases, this was done in close collaboration with civil society organisations and in the case of The Bahamas, with the private health sector. Both countries have at least one year of implementation experience and are ready to share lessons learned that are beneficial and can potentially be applied in other Caribbean countries.

The PANCAP Coordinating Unit (PCU), with funding under the CARICOM-Global Fund Project- Removing Barriers to accessing HIV and Sexual and Reproductive Health Services for Key Populations in the Caribbean – will convene a PrEP Share Fair on 16-17 July 2019 in Bridgetown, Barbados.

This Share fair will build on the south to south learning exchange to The Bahamas which was focused on understanding lessons learned that can be applied in Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. This Share fair will expand the PrEP knowledge base through the inclusion of participants from an additional eight countries- Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Suriname, St. Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, in addition to other participants from Guyana and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

Objectives

The Overall Objective of the Share fair is to increase national AIDS programme (NAP) managers, clinical practitioners, civil society organisations (CSO) and other stakeholders’ understanding of the process for rolling out PrEP programmes.

Specific Objectives:

• To facilitate participants’ understanding of the role of national AIDS programmes and civil society organisations in the design, implementation and monitoring of PrEP programmes.
• To increase participants’ understanding of the collaboration that is required among NAP managers, CSO representatives and other stakeholders to design, implement and monitor PrEP programmes.
• To enable participants to understand the factors that facilitated Barbados’ design, implementation and monitoring of its PrEP programme as well as the challenges.
• To identify lesson learned in the design, implementation and monitoring of Barbados PrEP programme and how these can be applied to different countries.
• To share country experiences on the status of their planning for, and implementation of PrEP.
• To enable participants to become familiar with the WHO PrEP toolkit.
• To develop country-specific work-plans with time-bound action items to advance PrEP in the respective countries.