Earlier this year, the American Psychological Association passed a resolution endorsing its support for a combination approach towards human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention, one that effectively employs both biomedical and psychosocial methods. Despite the recent success of preventive medical treatments such as the Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Initiative (iPrEx) in which HIV-negative men who were given Truvada showed a 44% decrease in infection rates, and in the CAPRISA 04 trials where women who received Tenofovir gel reported a 39% in contraction rates, psychosocial approaches are still needed to optimise the overall success of any prevention effort. Furthermore, despite the existence of successful behavioural methods, there are still individuals who continue to engage in unsafe sexual practices. Resultantly, the behavioural aspects of prevention (and their success), as represented by these biomedical methods necessarily depend on psychosocial forces.
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