KUALA LUMPUR – Health advocacy think tank Galen Centre has lambasted the Selangor Mufti Department for its “uninformed and misleading” advisory discouraging the dispensation of HIV-preventive drugs to “homosexual lifestyle” practitioners.
Its chief executive officer Azrul Mohd Khalib stressed that denying or providing selective access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is “bad medicine and poor practice” with no basis in public health.
“Providing indiscriminate access to PrEP to those who need it is key to ensuring that the treatment does what it is meant to do, which is reduce the number of people newly infected with HIV,” he said in a statement today.
Urging the department to review its published position on the issue, Azrul also recommended that consultation be carried out with the nation’s infectious diseases and public health experts for a better understanding of the issue.
“Imposing beliefs and judgements have either no relevance or impact on affected communities and might bring about harm by depriving them of much needed assistance and treatment.
“Why should we deny people at risk access to lifesaving treatment?” he questioned.
He added that while PrEP has been available in Malaysia since 2017 and is already part of the government’s National Strategic Plan for Ending AIDS 2016-2030, the availability of the medicine has been limited to a small number of public and private clinics in various localities nationwide.
He also said that the number of new infections dropped significantly over the last two decades with the Health Ministry taking a “pragmatic, compassionate, and far-reaching approach” to HIV prevention.
“Malaysia’s HIV epidemic changed dramatically. New infections dropped significantly and the epidemic was no longer driven by injecting drug use,” he said, noting that Malaysia has received international commendation for its approach.
Earlier today, an advisory by the state Mufti Department disallowing handing PrEP out to those practising “homosexual lifestyles” made the rounds on social media.
A check on the department’s religious Q&A page detailed that while the drug is permissible to be dispensed to wedded couples if one of them is infected with HIV, providing them to the community above is “colluding in sin and immorality”.
The advisory had subsequently drawn flak from certain segments of netizens, with some lashing out against the supposedly discriminatory stance.
“Denying someone medical treatment due to their sexuality is a crime. If you’re a doctor with any form of humanity, I hope you don’t abide by this,” Twitter user @fruhrzf said.
Denying someone medical treatment due to their sexuality is a crime. If you’re a doctor with any form of humanity, I hope you don’t abide to this. By this logic, stop providing treatment to smokers with lung cancers, cause smoking is also haram. Get. A. Grip. https://t.co/raCQty5XYJ
— Yes (@fruhrzf) January 20, 2023
Gay rights activist Numan Afifi took the opportunity to issue a message of solidarity with those targeted by the advisory.
Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not worth it. You’re loved and your wellbeing matters.#PrEP is lifesaving and your life is worth it.
— Numan Afifi (@NumanAfifi) January 20, 2023
Take your meds, be safe and take good care of yourself. We’re in this together, you’re not alone.
Salam dan sejahtera ke atas kalian. ❤️
“Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not worth it. You’re loved and your well-being matters. PrEP is lifesaving and your life is worth it,” he said on his Twitter page. – The Vibes, January 20, 2023
