(Bloomberg) -- The U.K.'s National Health Service will this year begin providing for free a drug that could eradicate HIV infections within 10 years, the Sunday Times reported.
People in higher-risk groups, such as gay men and sex workers, will be given pre-exposure prophylaxis, an antiretroviral drug, with the aim of eliminating new HIV infections, the newspaper said.
Matt Hancock, the British health secretary, said he was “determined to end HIV transmission” through the use of PrEP, which he said had been proven to “almost completely eradicate the chances of getting HIV.”
A little over 100,000 people in the U.K. were HIV positive in 2018. A trial of PrEP began in England in October 2017 and involved more than 20,000 men and women.
To contact the reporter on this story: Harry Wilson in London at hwilson57@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, James Amott, Andrew Reierson
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