PrEP cuts HIV risk by 99%, and the world is a sixth of the way to its target

**Pre-exposure prophylaxis reduces the risk of acquiring HIV from sex by 99%,
and from injection drug use by at least 74%**, when used as recommended.

It is, in effect, a solved problem waiting on distribution.

The gap

About a sixth of the way, with two years to go.

What the CDC contributed

**During 2017–2023 the CDC supported 2,278,743 PrEP initiations across 37
countries — 118.7% of its overall target for the seven-year period.**
856,816 of those were in 2023 alone.

So the programme beat its own goal by nearly a fifth, and accelerated sharply
in the final year — and the global total is still nowhere near where it needs
to be.

Both things are true, and reporting them together is the honest version. An
agency exceeding its target while the world misses its own by a factor of six
is a statement about the scale of the target, not about the programme.

What follows

**Additional scale-up is needed to meet the goal of 21.2 million people using
PrEP globally in 2025.**

With a 99% effective intervention, every unmet million is a straightforwardly
avoidable number of infections.

*Source: Peck ME, Davis S, Odoyo-June E, et al. Progress Toward UNAIDS Global
HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Targets: CDC-Supported Oral Pre-Exposure
Prophylaxis — 37 Countries, 2017–2023. MMWR, Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.*