The UK Court of Appeal [official website] on Thursday approved [judgment] the National Health Services (NHS) [official website] to fund research [press release] into the HIV drug PReP. The ruling has established that NHS England has the ability, but not the obligation, to fund PReP and would not be subject to legal challenges for funding. Pre Exposure Prophylaxis (PREP) [NHS backgrounder] has been under research in the UK for several years and can be expected to stop those at very highest risk from contracting the virus.

Combating HIV has been an international concern for years. Last June a group of UN independent human rights experts said that human rights violations contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS [JURIST report]. In May California’s governor signed Senate Bill 1408 into law, allowing HIV-positive individuals to become transplant donors to HIV-positive recipients [JURIST report]. In 2015 President Barack Obama issued executive order 13703 [JURIST documents] “Implementing the National HIV/AIDS Strategy,” which was intended to ensure successful implementation of the the updated national AIDS/HIV strategy. In 2013 the Alabama Department of Corrections [official website] announced an end to its policy of segregating HIV-positive inmates at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women [JURIST report]. In 2010 Human Rights Watch urged the South Carolina Department of Corrections to stop automatically segregating HIV-positive inmates [JURIST report].