The Galen Centre says UKM’s Prof Izhar Ariff Mohd Kashim’s comments may cause an escalation of harmful and discriminatory actions against transgender people.
Prof Izhar Ariff Mohd Kashim from UKM’s Faculty of Religious Studies, who spoke at MOH’s World AIDS Day celebration in Negeri Sembilan, allegedly told transgender people to “bertaubat” and falsely claimed that being LGBT is a root cause of HIV infection.
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), an oral medicine taken to prevent getting HIV from sex or injection drug use, will be dispensed at public health clinics in Selangor, Klang Valley, Johor, Penang, and Sabah.
Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman says Malaysia’s position as an upper-middle-income nation means that the country doesn’t automatically qualify for generic price negotiations.
Advocates should push political parties and election candidates to address various health issues in GE15 election manifestos, like health care financing, social and aged care, access to abortion, NCDs, tobacco control, HIV/AIDS, and pandemic preparedness.
Listed among second-tier countries in a ViiV Healthcare-MPP deal, Malaysia will have access to generics of long-acting injectable preventive HIV medication, cabotegravir, in 2027 at the earliest.
Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman says evidence-based thresholds must be determined for personal use versus trafficking, so that people caught in possession of drugs with amounts that are compatible with personal use, rather than sale, can be linked to treatment.
The positivity yield for premarital HIV testing in Malaysia is under 1%. Focus should be on self-testing for at-risk people, says Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman.
Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman says she would invest in online self-testing for HIV and improve linkages to treatment and PrEP to end AIDS in Malaysia by 2030.