Uso da profilaxia pós-exposição sexual ao HIV entre mulheres.

Abstract

The use of post-exposure prophylaxis after sexual intercourse for women is one of the challenges for the HIV prevention policies, because sociocultural aspects and gender inequalities hamper the appropriation of preventive measures for this population segment. Thus, this study aimed to describe the use of this type of post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV in consensual sexual intercourse between women assisted by public health services in Brazil. This is a cross cutout of a larger study that was conducted from the data of 365 women assisted by four health services from May 2012 to May 2016. Were described characterization variables of women, of the partner in sexual exposure that caused the use of prophylaxis, of the sexual exposure, of the use and the clinical follow-up, being the use categorized as complete or partial. The average age of women was 30.7 years (SD = 9, 5), 32.6% attended complete high school, 28.3% were sex workers, 16.1% owned serodiscordance partnership and 61.4% had not held test anti-HIV before. Sexual exposure occurred for vaginal sexual intercourse with casual partner (68.3%), with serological status unknown (60.1%) and rupture of condom (51.7%). A total of 49.0% of women held only one return query and 72.1% presented adverse effects. Specifically, among those who returned to the service in the period of 29 to 60 days, only 22.2% attended one or two return visits, 15.7% underwent anti-HIV testing and 81.8% underwent complete antiretroviral use. We can affirm that women use post-exposure prophylaxis after sexual exposure completely, but the health services can not retain these women during the period of clinical and serological follow-up, damaging the evaluation of the effectiveness of prophylaxis, pointing out the need for the organization of services and expansion of strategies that may provide greater autonomy for women to use preventive measures.