Lyn Brown – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lyn Brown on 2016-05-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when he expects a final decision to be made and announced on whether HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis is commissioned.

Jane Ellison

NHS England is in the process of re-considering its decision to remove pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) from the specialised commissioning annual prioritisation process. As such, no final decisions have yet been taken by NHS England as to whether or not they will routinely commission PrEP. This process, which is being overseen by NHS England’s Specialised Services Commissioning Committee, is expected to complete by the end of May 2016. Until the outcome of this process is known, NHS England will continue to work with Public Health England and the Department on planning for the proposed £2 million investment in an early implementer test site programme for PrEP. As part of this, NHS England will be exploring how, and where appropriate, a period of further support might be offered to the participants enrolled on the PROUD study. All the PROUD trial participants signed an explicit consent form that made clear that there was no long term commitment to continue providing PrEP beyond the trial.