Daily pill reshaping the fight against HIV infection – Al Jazeera America

Devin Barrington-Ward, 24, has chosen to take Truvada. “I’ve seen friends get sick, but I’ve never seen a friend die of HIV,” he said.

As an African-American gay man, he says he can see the skeptics’ side. “I think because that trauma [of the early HIV crisis] is oftentimes not dealt with appropriately, there is some angst about supporting something like Truvada or PrEP just because of they’ve seen so many of  friends die off.”

“But we have to recognize we’re in a different space of the epidemic and we kind of have to evolve with the times,” Barrington-Ward added.

He knows he lives and dates in a community with some of the highest HIV infection rates in the country. “I know the statistics, not just from a place where I read them on paper from an epidemiology report but those are my friends. Those are people in my sexual network. Those are people in my community. At this point in my life, I do know more men who are HIV positive than are negative,” he says.

Every week he attends meetings at the DENIM (Developing and Empowering New Images of Men) Collection, a community center where he talks with other African-American gay men about tough topics like sexuality.

“When we’re talking about the conversation of being for or against PrEP, I think that’s the wrong frame. We really should be talking about giving people choices and access to additional needs of prevention,” he said.

“We can’t hold gay men to a standard we don’t hold heterosexual people to, which is that fact that people don’t use condoms 100 percent of the time.”

Barrington-Ward works as a public health advocate full time, so he says he can see the bigger picture. “This is an opportunity to take some responsibility for my own sexual health and for those who are using PrEP to take responsibility for their own sexual health as well and not place that burden or put that responsibility in someone else’s hands,” he said.

At the current rate of HIV infection, there could be more than half a million new cases in the United States in the next 10 years.

The question is whether wider use of Truvada and PrEP would help slow the virus’ spread.