KUALA LUMPUR, July 23 – The government’s pilot project to provide the HIV prevention medication pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in government health clinics resulted in an increase of 9.8 per cent in clients who successfully abstained from sexual intercourse in the past six months, said Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad.
He added that there was also an increase from 29.2 per cent to 37.6 per cent of consistent condom use among participants of the programme.
The implementation of the PrEP programme at government health facilities began as a pilot study in January 2023 at 18 health clinics under the Ministry of Health (MOH) with a 12-month implementation period, he explained in a written parliamentary reply yesterday.
“The study aims to assess the impact of PrEP interventions from a public health perspective, particularly in preventing HIV infection and analysing changes in sexual behavior from high-risk to low-risk among users.”
He said that Malaysia’s approach to the implementation of the PrEP programme differed from several other countries in that the government is adopting a more comprehensive method by emphasising risk reduction counselling interventions as the core component of the PrEP programme in government facilities.
“This approach does not rely solely on medication, but also emphasises a comprehensive prevention strategy based on the ABCDE approach (Abstinence, Be faithful, Condom use, Do not share needles, Early testing and treatment).”
Dzulkefly was responding to Kuala Nerus MP, Alias Razak, who wanted a full status report of the PrEP pilot programme.
Of the 3,451 pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) users involved in the programme, only 15 individuals (0.4 per cent) tested positive for HIV, said Dzulkefly.
He added that further investigation found that all of them did not adhere to the prescribed medication regimen, which most likely contributed to the infection.
Alias also asked for the statistics on PrEP medication users by married couples and unmarried couples from 2023 to 2025.
“Based on the PrEP programme data, a total of 9,309 individuals have started taking PrEP as of June 2025. Of this total, 4.7 per cent (442) are among those who are married, while the rest are unmarried couples,” the health minister said.
Aside from low infection rates and high abstinence and condom use rates, he said the percentage of clients who had only one sexual partner and did not frequently change partners increased from 22.2 per cent at the start of the programme to 36.2 per cent after 12 months of PrEP.
Furthermore, 442 clients decided to discontinue PrEP as they are no longer engaging in risky sexual activity, according to Dzulkefly.
“Due to the effectiveness of this pilot study, the implementation of the PrEP programme was expanded in 2024 to 13 more health clinics, and subsequently, four more health clinics were enrolled in the programme in 2025.
“In total, 35 health clinics are now involved in the implementation of the PrEP programme nationwide as of June 2025.”
