Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:06 pm on 2 October 2018.
Thank you for the questions. I think one of the encouraging things we shouldn't lose sight of is that we are getting an engagement with people who previously weren't engaged with sexual health services because of the availability of PrEP. So, it's not just of benefit for HIV. As I said earlier, those other sexually transmitted infections that people are now being treated for would not have been discovered if they were not engaging with sexual health services to try and receive PrEP. That's a good thing. Not only that, though, but the five people that I mentioned earlier who have been diagnosed with HIV were previously undiagnosed, and they only engaged with sexual health services because of the nationwide availability of PrEP.
But, of course, that doesn't mean that everything is perfect. The sexual health review that I gave a statement to Members on in April of this year in Plenary highlighted a range of areas of both the review and the nine points of action being taken forward. And I will happily come back and make sure that Members are further updated, whether it's an oral statement or a written one, on the progress, and the board undertaking the progress of that is being overseen by the chief medical officer. So, it is at the senior end of the Government, the top of the Government, with the chief medical officer having oversight of it, because we recognise there is still more for us to do, and we need to make funding decisions that actually reach the need that we identify.
But, in terms of understanding how and why people do or don't engage with those services, there's not just the work that the review has done, but actually the study that I mentioned in answer to Angela Burns. Undertaken by Public Health Wales and Cardiff University, it is looking at how individuals living in Wales use PrEP and how PrEP relates to their behaviour and about their access to other health services. So, we're looking at that broader piece of work, and so we'll have some really useful information to come to us in the research being undertaken.
We also have an international perspective too. In the summer, last year, I met with Dr Owain Williams who, coincidentally, I knew when I was a student at Aberystwyth. He is now working in Queensland university—he's a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Queensland—and he's overseeing some of the work they're doing on a PrEP trial in Queensland too. So, we're looking at international evidence as well as evidence here in Wales as well. Because I would always want to be—and I say this regularly—guided by the evidence on what works best and understand that we can't force people to make decisions that we think are the right ones for them, but it's how we work with and understand the choices they make and try to help them to make genuinely informed choices, and that should inform our choices about the quality and the nature of healthcare that we provide to the wider public.